In 1865 two extraordinary women establish a raucous trading post for cast-off women, but their mirth is challenged by a greedy mayor and a murderous forger. Reviewers are calling it “exquisitely written.”
In 1865 in the shanty town of Tartatenango, the Caketown Bar is owned by the extraordinary Jaguar Paloma, matriarch of a village of raucous miscreants, cast-off mothers, muleteers, and forgers. Amid drunken monks, a roaring trade in faked marriages just for fun, and the Romani, residents balance on the knife-edge between legality and the illicit. Co-founder Orietta Becerra is breathtakingly beautiful and ambitious. But when she crosses the tracks and marries the town's mayor, her double life severs her friendship with Paloma and the town starts to pay the highest of prices. Adding to the chaos is a murderous forger, and a Civil War that claims men before their time.
Caketown – men want to destroy it. Women want to play in it. The township itself has to fight on all sides to survive.
Told in evocative magical realism, Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar is a tale of wronged women who stand up to be counted.
Fifth Book of the Southern Swallow Series. Nan Ya and his crew take a final adventure into a mythical Chinese universe and become entangled in court intrigue.
