Leaving Tabasco

In the tradition of such beloved classics as *How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents* and *Dreaming in Cuban* , Carmen Boullosa’s *Leaving Tabasco* is a lovely coming-of-age novel full of humor and touched by magic. Raised by her mother and grandmother in an all-female home with not enough affection but more than enough stories to go around, Delmira Ulloa enters adulthood with a wicked sense of humor and a delightful imagination. Agustini, the village where Delmira grows up, is not an ordinary place — it is a world where Delmira sees her grandmother floating above the bed when she sleeps, where her grandmother remembers a time when stones turned into water, where during the dry season one can purchase torrential rains at a traveling fair, where her family’s elderly serving woman develops stigmata, then disappears completely. As Delmira becomes a woman she will search for the missing stranger who fathered her, and in choosing her own allegiances she will make a choice that will force her to leave home forever. Brimming with the spirit of its irrepressible heroine and the magic of her grandmother’s nightly bedtime stories, *Leaving Tabasco* is a novel of great charm and depth that will remain in its readers’ hearts for a long time.