Quotes from Jeanine Cummins

Heart, You Bully, You Punk by Leah Hager Cohen and The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry.

I communed with jackrabbits, lizards, and peculiar desert squirrels and felt astonished by how much life popped and teemed in the desert. The Sonoran birds made songs I'd never heard before.

almost imperceptibly away from her. It's a rudeness that Lydia would've endeavored to counteract in her old life, with a smile and a kind word. Perhaps even a rebuke to the offending party. Because Lydia perceives that the Guatemalan women are snubbing the newcomer due to bigotry, because she's an india.

flirtatious tone comes out

todos sabem que o caminho para a verdadeira audácia passa sempre, primeiro, pelo fingimento.

If you can't trust a librarian, who can you trust?

Nicolás has never had a fundamental change of heart. So he's unaware of the way Newton's third law can resonate in a place like this: for every wickedness, there is an equal and opposite possibility of redemption.

The sky is scrubbed fresh and stark blue by the gone rain, but every trace of that water has evaporated from the earth around them. It feels like a dream, all that rainfall. This is a cycle, she thinks. Every day a fresh horror, and when it's over, this feeling of surreal detachment. A disbelief, almost, in what they just endured. The mind is magical. Human beings are magical.

introduction, shaking his head.

you could choose a different path,

gloves and dark black visors so you can't see their eyes, and their faces

cheerful shade of pink in the light

Despite everything he's been through, or maybe also because of it, her boy has weighed the call of his conscience above the call of his own salvation.

and Soledad and I would gather herbs and dry them and bundle them for Papi to sell in the market when he had a day off, and that's how we passed our days.

Luca has difficulty reconciling all the genuine kindness of strangers. It seems impossible that good people—so many good people—can exist in the same world where men shoot up whole families at birthday parties and then stand over their corpses and eat their chicken. There's a frazzling thrum of confusion that arcs out of Luca's brain when he tries to make those two facts sit side by side.

The first time a head turned up by itself on the street in Acapulco, it was a big deal.

arms raised. "Me, me!" she says. "Good, I need lots of helpers!" "I heard he was a

Because everything else is just chingaderas.

you truly are la reina de mi alma." The queen of my soul.

It's as subtle and significant as a heartbeat.

Lydia siempre ha sido una madre devota, pero nunca codependiente, como esas madres que extrañan a sus hijos cuando están en la escuela o cuando duermen. Siempre atesoró ese tiempo para sí, para habitar sus propios pensamientos y descansar del incesante clamor emocional de la maternidad.

from the glass, 'Abuela,' and renews his attack

Every day a fresh horror, and when it's over, this feeling of surreal detachment. A disbelief, almost, in what they just endured. The mind is magical. Human beings are magical.

It's unusual in a culture where adult children take care of their aging parents that Lydia's mother even had a savings account.