Diverse Book Tours Presents: Pig Park by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez @maquilagorilla @diversebktours @dos_twinjas

Excerpt From Pig Park:

I knew from that letter in that drawer that with no one to buy the bread, the bakery would close down 11 for good too. We would end up leaving Pig Park like everyone else. This is what else I knew: I’d lived in Pig Park my whole entire life. I still had a few friends left. So—even after everything—I couldn’t wrap my head around the bakery closing and us leaving also. It kept me up at night, wondering about tomorrow and the day after. Maybe I would never see my friends again. 

My family lived upstairs now. Maybe we’d end up homeless. My dad was always saying not to think like that, to leave the worrying to him and my mom, but—I just couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it about as much as I couldn’t help breathing or just being me. My dad tied an apron around his waist, rolled his sleeves up and grabbed hold of the masa resting on the counter. Sweat dampened his shirt across his thick broad back. He pounded down on dough the color of dirt clay. “How about some music?” “Music?” “Yes.” “Like what?” I grabbed a dish towel and dried my hands. “Anything.” I switched on the radio. 

My dad sang along to that old song, “Amorcitoooo Corazon.” I imagined 12 him making his way down a cobblestone road on a bike—balancing a big basket of freshly baked rolls on his head—belting out the song like in one of those old black and white movies they used to play in the park to bring the neighborhood together. “Dad, I like it when you sing. It makes me feel like I am all wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket,” I said. It made me think of how it was before, when things were good and my dad sang all the time. My dad sang even louder and smiled like it made him think of it how it was before too.

Title: Pig Park
Author: Claudia Guadalupe Martinez
ISBN: 978-1935955764
Publisher: Cinco Punto Press  
Pages: 256  
Genre: YA Contemporary

 Synopsis:
 It's crazy! Fifteen-year-old Masi Burciaga hauls bricks to help build a giant pyramid in her neighborhood park. Her neighborhood is becoming more of a ghost town each day since the lard company moved away. Even her school closed down. Her family's bakery and the other surviving businesses may soon follow. As a last resort, the neighborhood grown-ups enlist all the remaining able-bodied boys and girls into this scheme in hopes of luring visitors. Maybe their neighbors will come back too. But something's not right about the entrepreneur behind it all. And then there's the new boy who came to help. The one with the softest of lips. Pig Park is a contemporary Faustian tale that forces us to look at the desperate lengths people will go to in the name of community--and maybe love.

 

About The Author:

Claudia is the author of The Smell of Old Lady Perfume (Cinco Puntos, 2008) and Pig Park (Cinco Puntos, 2014). She grew up in sunny El Paso, Texas where she learned that letters form words from reading the subtitles of old westerns with her father. She now lives and writes in Chicago.

Check out her book!