Houston, We Have a Problema

Contributors

By Gwendolyn Zepeda

On Sale
Jan 8, 2009
Page Count
400 pages
ISBN-13
9780446543637

A plastic Virgin Mary and a fortune teller are a girl’s best friends in this laugh-out-loud novel about a superstitious young woman who doubts herself when it comes to finding love and living her life.

Jessica Luna is your typical 26 year old: she has man trouble, mom trouble, and not a clue what to do with her life (though everyone else in her family seems to have plenty of suggestions!) After a lifetime of being babied by her family, Jess is incapable of trusting herself to make the right choices. So instead, she bases all of her life decisions on signs. She looks to everything for guidance, from the direction her rearview-mirror-Virgin-de-Guadalupe sways to whatever Madame Hortensia, her psychic, sees in the cards.

When her sort-of boyfriend Guillermo, a gifted unmotivated artist, disappoints her again, Jessica thinks it’s time to call it quits. Just to be sure, she checks in with Madame Hortensia who confirms that yes, it is time for a change. (Who knew $20 could buy so much security!) Right on cue, Jess meets Jonathan; he’s the complete opposite of Guillermo–of all Jess’s boyfriends, in fact. He’s successful, has a stable job….and is white. Jess isn’t sure if Jonathan is really the change Madame Hortensia saw. Sure he gives great career advice, but is he advising her on a career she actually wants? And yes he’s all about commitment, but is it Jess or her mother who really wants marriage?

Jess runs back to Madame Hortensia for advice, but even she is out of answers. Now there’s only one thing that’s certain: no one–not her mother, her sister, her boyfriend or her psychic–can tell her what to do. For better or for worse, Jess will have to take the plunge and make her own decisions if she wants to have any future at all.

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$10.99

Price

$13.99 CAD

Gwendolyn Zepeda

About the Author

Gwendolyn Zepeda was born in Houston, Texas and attended the University of Texas at Austin. She was the first Latina blogger and began her writing career on the Web in 1997 as one of the founding writers of the entertainment site Television Without Pity. Since that time, Zepeda has published three critically acclaimed novels through Hachette, four award-winning children’s books through Arte Publico Press, a short-story collection, and two books of poems.

She was Houston’s very first poet laureate, serving a two-year term from 2013 to 2015. Zepeda lives in Houston with her family and pets.

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