MALAS

An entrancing debut novel set in a “dinky little border town” on the Texas side of the Rio Grande links the stories of two women, one a young wife and mother in the 1950s and the other a 14-year-old in 1994.

Both are considered malas by those around them, bad girls who are “willful and didn’t listen.” In 1951, Pilar Aguirre, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Mexican man, has moved to the United States with her handsome charro husband, José, and is shocked when an older woman approaches her house saying she herself is José’s wife. The woman puts a curse on Pilar, which seems to come true when two of Pilar and José’s children die. Despite the help provided by her sensible older comadre, Romi, Pilar is unable to cope with her situation. Four decades later, Lulu Muñoz—whose mother died in a motorcycle accident when she was 5—is being raised by a loving but alcoholic father along with her grandmother Romi. Lead singer in a punk band, Lulu is ambivalent about her upcoming quinceañera, with its frills and gaudy ceremony, until she forms a close relationship with the glamorous and mysterious Pilar, who has returned to town after decades away and comes up with a surprising scheme for the party. While the sections of the novel set in the ’90s are the liveliest, full of the complicated details of being a teenager pulled by tradition and pop culture, romance and independence, the briefer sections set in the ’50s provide a sense of context and of the differences and similarities between the two young women as Fuentes cunningly reveals the unexpected ties that bind them.

A vibrant portrait of two strong women and their mixed feelings about home.