'Loteria': A Fortune Told by Mexican Bingo Amazon.com
go to original July 9, 2013

Loteria is the story of 11-year-old Luz Castillo, in state custody after her father is arrested and her mother disappears. Luz tells her tale piece by piece, using cards from loteria, a Latin American game of chance. NPR's guest host Linda Wertheimer talks with author Mario Alberto Zambrano about his first novel. (NPR.org)

Loteria: A Novel by Mario Alberto Zambrano Check it out on Amazon.com

In Lotería, the spellbinding literary debut by Mario Alberto Zambrano, a young girl tells the story of her family’s tragic demise using a deck of cards of the eponymous Latin American game of chance.
 
With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, she retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of lotería cards. Each of the cards’ colorful images - mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars - sparks a random memory.
 
Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, and the events that led to her present situation. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.

Beautiful full-color images of lotería cards are featured throughout this intricate and haunting novel.

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