VENTURA — “Latina Characters & Women’s Voices” featuring local authors Cara Lopez Lee and Mona Alvarado Frazier to be held from 7 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, May 29 at Timbre Books, 1910 E. Main St., Ventura.
In 1910, twelve-year-old Candelaria Rivera and her family flee across the Chihuahuan Desert to America to escape the rising storm of the Mexican Revolution. Meanwhile, twenty-year- old Yan Chi Wong flees the Chinese Revolution and a shattering loss, also bound for America, where he’s nicknamed Yankee.
The unlikely pair meet in El Paso, Texas, where they fight to make a home in a world that does not want them, until a terrible desire threatens to destroy their lives.
“Candlelight Bridge” is not a romance, but a tale of grudging partners struggling to survive the American Dream.
Cara Lopez Lee is the author of the historical novel, Candlelight Bridge (May 28, FlowerSong Press). She’s also the author of the memoir, They Only Eat Their Husbands, and coauthor of the veteran-acclaimed Unexpected Prisoner: Memoir of a Vietnam POW (with Robert Wideman). Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Rivet and Manifest-Station.
Lee was an award-winning TV journalist in Alaska. Lee is also a winner of The Moth StorySLAM and is featured in such storytelling shows as Unheard L.A. and Risk. She’s passionate about traveling, swing dancing and binging stories of all kinds. She and her husband live in Ventura.
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Mona Alvarado Frazier is the author of “The Garden of Second Chances.”
Seventeen-year-old Juana stands accused of her husband’s murder—a crime she vehemently denies.
She didn’t run because she killed him, she ran because she didn’t. But no one believes Juana, an undocumented seventeen-year-old incarcerated for her husband’s death. Amid the chaos of prison and her grief, she creates a garden in the yard. A safe space. A place where she gains strength to take on the system before she loses her child.
After decades of working with incarcerated youth in Ventura County, Mona is fulfilling her passion for writing fiction. When she’s not exploring new destinations or writing, you can find her lost in a book or binge-watching K-dramas.
She is a member of SCBWI, Macondo Writers, and a co-founder of #LatinxPitch, an annual X pitch event.
Mona writes to amplify the voices of underrepresented women.