978-1-935955-73-3
$16.95, 234 pgs
So this is what I thought that night...I thought, I will not sleep through my life. I am going to live it awake. - Mercy Amadoforgiveness - synonyms: pardon, absolution, exoneration, remission, dispensation, indulgence, clemency, mercy
Our cast:
Mercedes (Mercy) Amado – divorced mother of three, grandmother,
teacher
Celeste Amado – eldest daughter, divorced, investment
manager, borderline (?) alcoholic
Sylvia Amado Levine – middle child, married mother of two, housewife,
Russian lit expert
Nataly Amado – youngest daughter, single, textile artist,
bohemian
One of the remarkable things about The Amado Women by Désireé Zamorano is that it is indistinguished. No
no no, hold on – allow me to explain. From the above cast descriptions you cannot
know the ethnic backgrounds of these women. Their backgrounds could be Italian,
Albanian, Egyptian, Welsh. It
strikes me as ridiculous in the year 2014 to feel the need to say this: These ladies are Latinas and yet not one lives in the
barrio; there are no maids, no chicken-plucking line workers, no yardmen, no
halting English or standing around in parks or on street corners waiting for
work. They are vibrant women living in California in the twenty-first century – suburbia, Silicon Valley, metropolitan Los Angeles. No one should have to point this out this late in the game: The Amado
women are simply, and complexly, American. The lack of stereotypes frees them
to just be human and that is such a relief, que no?
Our story begins with a mystery and a crime. Sylvia’s
10-year marriage is falling apart – no, actually it’s being ripped apart and
stomped on. Her husband Jack is a successful attorney with all the trappings:
McMansion, Ralph Lauren socks, inappropriate landscaping. But Sylvia has
discovered that they’re practically broke. What has Jack done with all of their
money? That’s the mystery. The crime is that Sylvia (and one of the children)
is being stomped on, quite literally, by Jack. Sylvia collects all of the financial
paperwork she can find, the clues to the mystery, and sends it to her sister
Celeste, the investment manager. Celeste will be able to solve the mystery and
track down the missing funds. Except that the brilliant, prudent, and skillful Celeste
can’t – the money has disappeared without a trace. There’s no trail to follow
and this is the worst clue of all because “…In Celeste’s business, missing
money meant addiction: drugs, sex, gambling.”
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Désireé Zamorano |
The Amado Women is well-plotted and skillfully paced. Désireé Zamorano is accomplished at creating atmosphere, especially the menace radiating from Jack.
There’s a sexual assault scene between husband and wife that had me shrinking
in my chair – the scene powerful enough to evoke self-preservation, instinctively
making myself a smaller target. As talented as she is at atmospherics, Ms.
Zamorano’s triumph is her characters and her portrayal of the individual
histories that converge to form tangled family relationships. In the face of
tragedy and the turmoil of the aftermath, these four very different women must
come together to form a united whole. Can they do it? This will require
forgiveness from each to the other but first, and possibly more difficult, they
will have to forgive themselves.
Désireé Zamorano is a playwright, Pushcart Prize nominee for fiction, and the director of the Community Literacy Center at Occidental College. She also collaborates with InsideOut Writers, a program that works with formerly incarcerated youth.
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