In Conversation: On L.A. Weather: A Novel

Esmeralda Santiago was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico; she came to the United States at 13. In 1977, she and her husband, Frank Cantor, founded Cantomedia, a film and media production company which has won numerous awards for excellence in documentary filmmaking. Her writing career evolved from her work as a producer/writer of documentary and educational films. Santiago has written three real-life accounts: When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir, Almost a Woman: A Memoir, and The Turkish Lover: A Memoir. Her debut novel, América’s Dream, was published in six languages. She is also the author of the illustrated children’s book, A Doll for Navidades, and is co-editor, with Joie Davidow, of the anthologies Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share Their Holiday Memories and Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember their Mothers. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, House & Garden, Metropolitan Home, and Sports Illustrated, and she has provided guest commentary on NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

María Amparo Escandón is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Esperanza’s Box of Saints: A Novel and González & Daughter Trucking Co: A Road Novel with Literary License. Born in Mexico City, she has lived in LA for nearly four decades. In L.A. Weather: A Novel (Flatiron Books), Los Angeles is parched and dry as a bone. And all Oscar – the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family – wants is a little rain. He’s also carrying a costly secret, one that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with more intimacy and less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters – Claudia, a TV chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media whiz who has a knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers – are blindsided and left to question everything they know. Now the family must wrestle with impending evacuations, secrets, deception, betrayal, and their toughest decision yet: Stick together or burn it all down? Jorge Ramos, award-winning journalist and author of No Borders, called L.A. Weather “a phenomenal story about the Mexican-American experience in LA: fun, quirky, heart-wrenching, very human and full of soul. Read it and realize how much we all share (beyond the weather).”