The Amado Women

July 28, 2014
Debut novelist Zamorano's family drama purports to offer alternatives to Latina stereotypes, but winds up relying on shallow characterizations and easy targets. The three Amado sisters couldn't be more different: career-driven Celeste has been focused solely on money and investments ever since she suffered a tragedy years before; perfect wife and mother Sylvia secretly suffers physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her non-Latino husband; and Nataly, the baby sister, struggles to make ends meet as an artist and waitress. As the sisters rally around a crisis affecting Sylvia's family, individual and family secrets are dredged up, including a feud between Nataly and Celeste and a long-buried sorrow from their mother Mercy's past. The narration proceeds somewhat jerkily between past and present and among the women's points of view. There is little character development here, and characters' motivations are frequently unclear and their behaviors unexplained. Most troubling, however, is that this novel supposedly valorizing girl power does so at the expense of all of the male characters, who are, to a man, cruel, unfaithful, duplicitous, or all three.

July 15, 2014
A Latino mother and her growndaughters demonstrate the meaning of family loyalty in Zamorano's debut.The Amado women represent a mixture of traditionaland modern values, and each defines her life by a set of complex rules. Mercyhas spent years church-hopping in an attempt to seek answers to questions offaith rising from a long-buried childhood incident. Once married to a drunkenphilanderer, she shrugged aside hardship to pursue her life's calling-teaching-and waited until her daughters were grown before leaving their father. Oldestdaughter Celeste is a successful investment manager whose early pregnancy andsubsequent marriage interrupted the promise of acceptance at any number of IvyLeague colleges. Now divorced, she lives in self-imposed exile in a differentCalifornia city from her family, and she and her youngest sister, Nataly, areestranged. Nataly suffers from issues of abandonment and supports herself as awaitress to fund her true calling, art, and refuses to talk to her sister.Given the history of her father's infidelity, she's alarmed to find herselfattracted to an older married man. Middle daughter Sylvia appears to be themost settled of the siblings. From the exterior, life with her up-and-cominghusband and two young daughters looks perfect. But Jack's a self-centeredabuser with little conscience whose actions threaten to further harm his wifeand girls. When a family emergency looms, the Amado women attempt to skirttheir personal differences to provide assistance, but those barriers aren'tcompletely removed until an even larger crisis occurs.Zamorano provides a compassionateportrait of a family pushing difficulties aside to help each other; however, despite the author's attempt to engage readers with multiple plotcomplications, the book is curiously flat.

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September 1, 2014

This debut novel begins with Sylvia, an attractive mother of two living in a wealthy Southern California suburb, being beaten up by her jerk of a husband. Sylvia's mother, Mercedes (called Mercy), is a stylish, divorced woman of 60 whose ex-husband is a lying, cheating, hard-drinking loser, and each of her three grown daughters has problems as well. (Likable men in this novel are few and far between.) Youngest daughter Nataly is a free-spirited artist who at 32 still acts like a teenager and has a thing for bad boys. Now middle-aged, Celeste is a successful financial manager but has unresolved issues. And poor Sylvia. Will she be able to break free of her viciously abusive husband and save herself and her children? As readers will see, there are further problems in store for this troubled family. VERDICT Zamorano says she wanted to portray the life of "the invisible Latina," but this novel will appeal to female readers of any ethnic background who enjoy a fast-paced story with lots of family drama and strong characters who overcome bad relationships and the other adversities life hands them.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014
For 60-year-old Mercy Amado, memory is an elaborate quilt piecing together the story of her immigrant mother and the accidental death of her younger, invalid brother while under Mercy's care. Throughout Zamorano's provocative novel, quilts and blankets continually remind the resourceful matriarch of her California family. Her three adult daughters are successful, middle-class Latinas who, nevertheless, struggle with ambition and wildly disappointing men. Nataly, the youngest, is a textile artist who literally weaves the family's complications into her work. Celeste, the oldest, is a brilliant financier who mourns a stillborn daughter. But sister Sylvia lives the closest to peril, despite a seemingly settled life in suburbia with her husband and two young daughters. After a tragedy, Mercy and her family must scramble to help reassemble daily life for the next generation of females. Zamorano weaves in lighter moments with meditations on the women's emotional and cultural inheritances. Why do we expect so much from our parents? an exhausted Mercy wonders. They're just as stupid and ignorant of the grand scheme of things as we are.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)