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Available October 6, 2009

Interlocking Stories of Four Latinas Bound by Love of Folklórico Dance Hailed as a “Lyrical and Sensual Follow-up to Across a Hundred Mountains”

Dancing With Butterflies, Reyna Grande’s anticipated follow-up to her award-winning debut novel Across a Hundred Mountains, tells the story of four unforgettable women who, despite their differences, are bound together by their Mexican roots and their love of Folklórico dance. Grande weaves their interlocking stories together, rendering their lives with startling emotional honesty.

Grande, whose first novel captured both the American Book Award as well as the El Premio Aztlán Literary Award with its haunting tale of immigration and the quest for identity, has again spun a story of intimacy and timely import, against the vivid and sensuous backdrop of Ballet Folklórico. This time, a quartet of Mexican American women find themselves at various intersecting crossroads in life and love, with each of them destined to explore paths that bring them face-to-face with abuse, disillusionment, mid-life crisis and the search for self-acceptance. Ultimately, however, the four find that the common threads of their shared roots and their mutual passion for dance transcend their individual crises, strengthening their friendships.

Born in Guerrero, Mexico, Grande came to the U.S. at the age of nine as an undocumented immigrant to join her parents who had come seeking work and a better life for their family. Finding solace in the world of books and in writing, Grande became the first person in her family to receive a higher education, eventually earning her B.A. in Creative Writing and Film and Video from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University. A 2003 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, she also teaches writing and is a highly sought-after public speaker.

Her own experiences crossing the border and navigating her way between two cultures – the rural, impoverished one she left behind and the challenging, urban one she came to embrace in Los Angeles – have informed her storytelling in both thematic and narrative ways. As noted in the Kirkus Review of Dancing With Butterflies, Grande’s absorbing and vivid prose, together with her considerable flair for the dramatic twist, “unders core the fierce humanity of these wise-Latinas-in-training.”

Dancing with Butterflies Reyna Grande. Washington Square, $16 paper (416p) ISBN 978-1-4391-09 06-9