Treasures in Heaven



Treasures in Heaven is about the things we yearn for, but can never quite grasp. Set at the end of the 1800's in Mexico City, Estela arrives from the north in search of her lover. She finds work as director of a school for street children conducted by an eccentric, wealthy woman. The school expands to include the mothers, and Estela becomes a participant in the feminist movement of the time. The astonishing things she learns about the world transform her into what we would recognize as a modern woman. This is the last of three novels set in 19th Century Mexico, and received the 2001 Washington State Book Award. (Chronicle Books, 2000).

Now in paperback from Northwestern University Press.




Selected Works

Creative Nonfiction
The Desert Remembers My Name
Essays on Family and Writing

The Desert Remembers My Name makes an important contribution to discussions of ethnicity, identity, and the literature of place.”
Bloomsbury Review
Fiction
Treasures in Heaven
"...a mesmerizing tale... the author explores the fascinating confusions and contradictions plaguing a culture precariously poised between tradition and modernization."
Booklist
The Flower in the Skull
"She never forgot the power of storytelling as testimony."
The Utne Reader
Spirits of the Ordinary
"Kathleen Alcalá's Spirits of the Ordinary is an enthralling book..."
–Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Books

"This book entered my dreams."
–Alberto Rios
Short Fiction
Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist
"Thoroughly satisfying."
The New York Times Book Review

"By turns touching, entertaining, and surprising, and uniquely her own."
Publishers Weekly

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