The Bolero of Andi Rowe: Stories

Largely set in Los Angeles s San Gabriel Valley, this prize-winning collection of interlinked stories centers on the Rowe family. Olivia Real, originally from Mexico, marries Charles Rowe in the 1970s. They have two daughters: Andi takes after her mother, Maura is blonde, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned. Olivia and Charles get divorced a few years later, but Olivia, whose parents died when she was a child, continues to have a special relationship with her Irish-born mother-in-law. 

Plummer s characters share a keen sense of the loss that comes from distance both figurative and literal. In Happy Hour, Olivia grapples with her mother-in-law s death, and in To Visit the Cemetery, she visits her parents grave in Mexico City, where she seeks reconciliation with her sister, who has remained in their native land. Andi, an architecture student in New York, struggles to connect to the friends and neighbors she s left behind, including her best friend, a Filipina bent on finding love in the club scene, and Andi s almost-sweetheart, a musician doctor-to-be torn between affections. When distances are closed between characters, the emotion and passion is explosive and honest. 

Plummer has written an evocative, sometimes surprisingly sexy collection that, when taken as a whole, shows an incredibly rich picture of a place and a way of life. The Bolero of Andi Rowe marks the arrival of a truly original voice in Latina fiction.