The Girls from the Revolutionary Cantina »

M. Padilla is a winner of the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and a California Arts Council artist fellowship. Padilla lives in West Hollywood, California.

Inspired by their good-natured rivalry, career-oriented best friends Julia Juarez and Ime Benevides have never let anything come between them. Then enters Julia's new coworker, Ilario, who pulls both women's heartstrings, disrupts their friendship, and brings Julia's career to the brink of disaster.

Looking for support, Julia turns to her other friends: Concepción, a party-obsessed dance instructor; Nina, a timid but shrewd seamstress who's not too taken with her fiancé; and Marta, owner of the Revolutionary Cantina, who is preoccupied with the details of a Hollywood murder case. When they involve Julia in a risky scheme, she must choose between her loyalty to her friends and a chance to live the life she's worked so hard to achieve.

Boasting irreverent, edgy humor and a clear sense of Southern Californian culture, this hilarious, insightful debut novel by award-winning author M. Padilla brilliantly captures the comforts and dangers of friendship.

Publishers Weekly

Two best friends from the San Fernando Valley find their friendship tested in Padilla's lively first novel (after story collection Hard Language). Sales rep Julia Juarez and realtor Ime Benevides have developed close bonds with zany dance teacher Concepcion and quiet seamstress Nina, who's wondering if she should marry her off and on boyfriend. After Ime begins dating Julia's secret office crush and Concepcion's old frenemy returns to wreak emotional havoc on Nina, each woman must re-examine how to maintain their friendships and stay true to their own desires. Adding extra juice to the sometimes thin string of work and love problems is a hilarious subplot about a celebrity with serious issues. This is refreshingly less ditzy and frantic than many of its peers, but it also tends to lag right when it shouldn't. Not bad, not great, but fun nevertheless. (July)