Downloading Arribada

"Themes of environmental justice, queer love, and Indigenous rights intersect in González’s mystery-" Starred Kirkus Review

Mariana Sánchez Celis has traveled the world as a pianist trained at the Juilliard School of Music. But when her mother has a stroke and her beloved uncle suddenly disappears, Mariana must put her life on hold to return to her home in Ayotlan, Mexico.

She soon discovers her town is no longer the place she remembers. Ayotlan’s beaches, sea turtle colonies, and historic center are decimated under decades of neglect and abuse. What part did her late father have in this? And could it be related to her uncle’s disappearance?

When Fernanda Lucero, a member of the indigenous Concáac people, convinces Mariana to join her sea turtle and architectural conservation projects, the deepening love between Mariana and Fernanda threatens to put them both further in harm’s way. This, together with the web of secrets Mariana unravels, stands to radically transform her and her family’s fate.

Arribada is the story of a well-to-do woman pushed to confront her role in environmental and social injustice. It is the saga of a family faced with the realization that their comfortable position rests, beyond a strong work ethic, on crimes against what they hold the natural world, their town, and their loved ones.

Reviews

Themes of environmental justice, queer love, and Indigenous rights intersect in González’s mystery. González shines at exploring the effects of racist discrimination against Indigenous Mexicans without ever reducing characters to mere pawns. Her prose style is simple yet poignant and emotive, particularly when describing human desire and natural beauty. A suspenseful but tender tale that exemplifies the power of intersectionality.
— Kirkus Reviews

Arribada is romantic, poetic, elegiac, and fascinating. González has created a world of love and mystery. Word to word, event to event, this novel is beautiful. It begs to be savored.
—Sandra Scofield, author of Swim: Stories of the Sixties and The Last Draft

A novel about how even the most painful truths can bring power and freedom.
—Eileen Gonzales, Foreword Reviews

This novel will open eyes.
—Amy Hoffman, author of Dot & Ralfie and other books

Arribada is a wonderful read, and like its title implies, it has the power to make readers arrive where it matters.
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels

Set in a fictional seaside locale, based partly on Mazatlán, this seductive, mesmerizing novel lyrically interweaves the encroaching consumerism of resorts, thinning beaches, and disappearing tortoises, all while presenting an intimate, generational family portrait replete with orphans, murder, sensuality, and compassion, including a lesbian affair that leads to a community reclamation of land. And always at the center—the ocean. Unforgettable.
—Lee Hope, Founding Editor, Solstice Magazine

Arribada is a lyrical, deeply personal story, steeped in our right to love whom we love, the depth of family bonds, and the defense of our its themes are both timely and timeless.
—Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood

About Estela González

Estela González (US/Mexico) writes about the lives of the liminal and the vulnerable: sea turtles, monarch butterflies, LGBT persons, and Latinex immigrants.

Her debut novel Arribada is among Kirkus Reviews' 100 Best Indie Books of 2022. Her Spanish-language novel Limonaria (same story but different language, style, and narrative approach) is available with Editorial Verbum.

Estela’s fiction has appeared, in English and/or Spanish, in Barcelona Review, Best of Solstice, Coal Hill, Feminine Rising, Flash Frontier, Latino Book Review, Luvina, Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, Sinister Wisdom, and Under the Volcano, among others.

Estela spends as much time as possible in her ancestral hometown, Mazatlán (Mexico). Her other home is in Vermont, where she teaches Latin American literature at Middlebury College. She is currently finishing a historical novel about Mazatlán gay ghosts.