Chango's Fire: A Novel - Softcover

Quinonez, Ernesto

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060565640 ISBN 13: 9780060565640

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2005

Synopsis

In New York City's Spanish Harlem, Julio and Maritza are each searching for a path that will give their lives meaning, even if it's shadowed by controversy. Julio is an arsonist for hire, pocketing thousands of dollars from investors eager to capitalize on more expensive real estate. But when he has reason to stop setting his neighborhood ablaze and vows to change his ways, Julio's employers threaten his life - and the lives of those close to him. Maritza, meanwhile, has become the pastor of a progressive Pentecostal church - the perfect cover for the scam she's running. For the right price, she'll make anyone an American citizen.

With a cast of characters as colorful as the city itself, Ernesto QuiÑonez brings to life a landscape we can all recognize.

About this title

About the Author:

Ernesto Quiñonez is the author of Bodega Dreams, which was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers title as well as a Borders Bookstore Original New Voice selection. He lives in Harlem.

From Publishers Weekly:

With the money he makes burning down houses as part of an insurance scam, Julio Santana, 29, a reluctant professional arsonist in Spanish Harlem, strives to make a better life for himself and his parents in this heart-on-its-sleeve novel of urban Latino life by Quiñonez, author of the critically acclaimed Bodega Dreams (2000). Despite his ambitions to make good—he's also in night school and working an above-board demolition job—Julio is wary of the gradual gentrification of his beloved neighborhood, which takes a personal turn when white girl Helen moves in downstairs. Her swings from condescension to belligerence are rather jarring (and not entirely credible), but Julio falls for her and embarks on a doomed relationship. Meanwhile, his old friend Maritza is running a church on the ground floor of his building, which she uses as a front for anti-AIDS crusading and shady immigration dealings. Erratic plotting jolts the reader from one neighborhood drama to the next, as Julio wrestles with questions of identity and ethics. But when he's blackmailed by his boss into doing one last arson job, a plot twist lets him (and Quiñonez) take the easy way out. Quiñonez has a comfortable familiarity with his turf and the catchy Spanglish most of his characters speak, but he tackles too much in this sometimes preachy, sketchy novel.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060565640
• ISBN 13: 9780060565640
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288