A FABLEISTIC, “CURIOUS AND DAZZLING” DEBUT NOVEL OF ENORMOUS POWER AND GRACE ABOUT A SISTER TRYING TO HOLD BACK HER BROTHER FROM THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS FOR READERS OF JESMYN WARD AND TOMMY ORANGE (BOOKLIST, STARRED REVIEW). 

In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother’s passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa’s own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be.

As the siblings reckon with generational and ancestral trauma, set against the indignities of present-day prejudice, other strange hauntings begin to stalk these pages: their mother’s ghost kicks her heels against the walls; Rufina’s vanished child creeps into her arms at night; and above all this, watching over the siblings, a genderless, flea-bitten angel remains hell-bent on saving what can be saved.

Jamie Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and long-time resident of northern New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in Epoch, Yellow Medicine Review, Sin Fronteras, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction among other journals and is forthcoming in Agni, Elle, and Emergence Magazine. Jamie received her MFA in Creative Writing from The Institute of American Indian Arts where she is now an Assistant Professor. Recipient of the Truman Capote award, and the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts award, she was also chosen as a Bread Loaf, Rona Jaffe Scholar, and is a VONA alum. Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult) is her debut novel.