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THROWBACK THURSDAY! LOVING PEDRO INFANTE BY DENISE CHAVEZ




Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2001

“There’s nothing a Mejicano or Mejicana loves more than the burning, stinging pain of thwarted, frustrated, hopeless, soulful, take-it-to-the-grave love. Nothing gets us going more than what I call rabia/love of the te-juro-you’re-going-to-pay-for-all-the-suffering-you-caused-me variety.”  --Tere




Teresina “Tere” Vila is looking for love in all the wrong places.  She’s divorced, 30-something Chicana working “in the hinterlands of life” in New Mexico, a small dusty town near El Paso, Texas. The love of her life is Lucio, a smooth-talking ne'er-do-well who will never leave his wife and ties Tere's heart in knots with a string of empty promises. Her diversions are few but intense, and center around her best friend, Irma, and her membership in the Pedro Infante Fan Club. 

For those of you who don’t recognize the name, Pedro Infante was the Mexican Elvis Presley. His movies from the 1940s and 1950s were viewed with obsessive devotion by millions of fans the Spanish world over.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR.   Denise Chávez is a leading award-winning Chicana playwright and novelist from New Mexico. She focuses her writing in the southwest, “in heat and dust” where she claims “love is as real as the land.” From here is where Denise draws inspiration for her characters. She is also the Director/Bookseller at Casa Camino Real, a bookstore and gallery on the historic Camino Real in Las Cruces, NM. She believes in the power of writing to heal lives and heal the many borders between people, real and imagined.


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