Frontera Street - Softcover

Tanya Maria Barrientos, a journalist for more than 20 years, is a staff writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her fiction was awarded a 2001 fellowship by the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, and the 2001 Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Born in Guatemala, she grew up in a Texas border town like the characters in her book. She is currently working on her next novel.

Dee Paxton is 28, recently widowed and pregnant when she applies for a job at a fabric shop in the Mexican neighborhood of her West Texas town at the opening of Frontera Street by Tanya Maria Barrientos. Dee's Mexican-American co-worker, Alma, pegs Dee as a stuck-up white woman, but when Dee collapses at the store, Alma finds herself obliged to care for her for a few days. Single-mother Alma gradually warms to Dee, as Dee comes to appreciate and love the Mexican-American culture of their border town. The plot is contrived and the story slow moving, but Barrientos's genuine affection for her characters and West Texas border life shines through.
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