L.A. Weather - by María Amparo Escandón

Book Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

FORECAST: Storm clouds are on the horizon in L. A. Weather, a fun, fast-paced novel of a Mexican-American family from the author of the #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller Esperanza's Box of Saints.

"There's a 100% chance you'll be paging through this book to uncover the secrets and deception that could potentially burn everything down!"--Reese Witherspoon

"This is by far one of the most endearing L.A. novels in recent memory."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

A capacious book, chock-full of human drama...Escandón's narrative voice is often witty and warm, and her meditations on Los Angeles are lush and lyrical...A lively and ambitious family novel.--New York Times Book Review

L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He's harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters--Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers--are left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way.

With quick wit and humor, María Amparo Escandón follows the Alvarado family as they wrestle with impending evacuations, secrets, deception, and betrayal, and their toughest decision yet: whether to stick together or burn it all down.

Review Quotes

Named a Best Book of the Year:
New York Times - She Reads - Real Simple - Library Journal - Harper's Bazaar

A BEST BOOK OF SEPTEMBER (Alta, PopSugar, Bustle, CNN, E! News, Ms. Magazine, Nylon, GMA, and more!)

"This story beautifully weaves together the theme of family and uses weather as a metaphor to peel back the curtain on the layered lives of three sisters and their parents." -- Reese Witherspoon

"Enchanting." -- Oprah Quarterly

"María Amparo Escandón is bold. Who dares to write about the weather in Los Angeles? Unlike the warm and benign climate cliché that can so easily be ignored, the complicated richness that makes up the Alvarado family can be appreciated from the first paragraph."
-- Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate

A phenomenal story about the Mexican-American experience in L.A: fun, quirky, heart-wrenching, very human and full of soul. Read it and realize how much we all share (beyond the weather). María Amparo Escandón is a superb and unique observer.
-- Jorge Ramos, award-winning journalist and author of No Borders

"Take it from María Amparo Escandón--it's not always 72 and sunny in Los Angeles. Known for her sly humor, she brings us a surprising story about family life in one of America's most complex cities.
-- Reyna Grande, author of Across A Hundred Mountains

There is no other voice as quick-witted and sharp as María Amparo Escandón's. In L.A. Weather she displays yet again her talent for creating engaging characters who leap off the page and linger like old friends or cherished relatives. As the Alvarados face shifts of tectonic proportions, Escandón confronts how families test our understanding of not just ourselves, but of the very world around us.
-- Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime and Still Water Saints

"Messy lives of women, well told. What could be better?"
-- Rodrigo García, writer and director of Nine Lives and Mother and Child

A warmhearted domestic drama with political undercurrents makes for fun reading. -- Kirkus Review

Absorbing, moving, comic and tragic, L.A. Weather will capture readers and never let them go. -- Shelf Awareness

A year in the life of a Mexican Jewish family whose problems include a near-drowning, a drought and drama galore as the marriages of the parents and all three daughters go off the rails. -- People

Escandón folds weighty issues--immigration, climate change, gentrification--into a lively, slyly humorous family story. -- Library Journal

About the Author