Jamie Figueroa, Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer: A Novel

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In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother’s passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa’s own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be.

As the siblings reckon with generational and ancestral trauma, set against the indignities of

present-day prejudice, other strange hauntings begin to stalk these pages: their mother’s ghost kicks her heels

against the walls; Rufina’s vanished child creeps into her arms at night; and above all this, watching over the

siblings, a genderless, flea-bitten angel remains hell-bent on saving what can be saved.

About the Author

Jamie Figueroa received her MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her writing has appeared in Epoch, McSweeney’s, and American Short Fiction. She is the recipient of the Truman Capote Scholarship and is a Bread Loaf scholar. Boricua by way of Ohio, Figueroa lives in northern New Mexico.