Loteria: A Novel

You may have read dozens of books about a tragic family, but how many of those books were written through a card game? Loteria is a Mexican game much like Bingo, played with 54 pictures (instead of numbers). 11-year-old Luz uses the cards to tell the story of her family. Each chapter is a Loteria card, each chapter slowly reveals the tragic story of her family. “The drum” tells the story of her abusive, alcoholic father who broke her arm. The following chapters reveal other tragedies such as the arrest of her father, an accidental shooting, the death of her sister, and disappearance of her mother. As each event is revealed, the reader begins to wonder how this story can have a happy ending? How will an 11-year-old find peace after so much tragedy? This is Mario Alberto Zambrano’s first novel.