Lotería: A Novel

By Mario Alberto Zambrano

In this literary debut, a young girl tells of her traumatic life via a Mexican card game in a “heart-wrenching tale of violence, love and a broken family” (Los Angeles Times).

With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, she retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through her beloved deck of lotería cards, a Latin American game of chance . Each of the cards’ colorful images—mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars—sparks a random memory.

Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, and the events that led to her present situation. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.

By turns affecting and inspiring, Lotería is a powerful novel that reminds us of the importance of remembering, even when we are trying to forget.

Beautiful images of lotería cards are featured throughout this intricate and haunting novel.

“A taut, fraught, look at tragedy, its aftermath, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.” —Justin Torres, National Book award-winning author of Blackouts

“Sheer genius.” —Booklist, starred review

“Loteria . . . captures, from a wide-eyed yet uncloying child’s perspective, the way in which life can feel a lot like a game of chance.” —Vogue

“Like the novels of Cortazar, its form is intricate and beautiful.” —Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love

“An intriguing debut and an elegiac, miniature entry in the literature of Latin American diaspora that will break your heart.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9780062268563

Mario Alberto Zambrano

Mario Alberto Zambrano published his debut novel Lotería in 2013 with Harper. He’s the recipient of a Presidential Scholar Award, Princess Grace Award, NEA Fellowship in Literature, Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, along with multiple residencies across the globe including Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, England. He has served as Lecturer in Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard University and is currently the Associate Director of Dance at The Juilliard School.

Book preview

LA ARAÑA

This room has spiders.

¿Y? It’s not like You don’t see them. The way they move their legs and carry their backs and creep in the dark when you’re not looking. You see us, ¿verdad? You see what we see? It’s not like You don’t know what we’re thinking when we lie down at night and look up at the ceiling, or when we crawl in our heads the way these spiders crawl over furniture. It’s never made sense why people think You’re only there at church and nowhere else. Not at home or in the yard or the police station. Or under a bed.

When I first walked in there was a wooden desk and a chair that wobbled when I sat in it, next to a thin bed with a green blanket. Tencha said the room needed something so she started buying me roses from the flower shop in Magnolia Park and putting them on the windowsill. From one day to the next I watch the petals fall to the floor and that’s when I notice the spiders. They crawl to the cracks in the wall when she comes to visit then crawl out again when she leaves. I’m at my desk doing what she told me to do, because she said I should write as much as I can, even if it’s one word, one sentence. Let the cards help you, mama. Échale ganas.

My name is Luz. Luz María Castillo. And I’m eleven years old. You’ve known me since before I was born, I’m sure, but I want to start from the beginning. Because who else should I speak to but You?

It’s been five days since I’ve been here and I don’t have anything but a week’s worth of clothes and a deck of Lotería. The best thing to do now is to be patient and cooperative, they say, otherwise I’ll be sent to Casa de Esperanza. Tencha can’t have custody, not unless we move back to Mexico, and they say that whenever I’m ready to talk it’ll make things easier. But Tencha told them she filed her papers and has been working here for eight years, so why don’t they let me go? Why can’t she take me? I’m waiting for the day she walks in and tells me to pack my bags because we’re going home, wherever that is.

Julia’s a counselor here and looks like she could be in college, skinny and black, but gringa-looking by the things she wears. She tries to talk to me at lunch as she flips her hair to one side like a feathered wing. She brings me issues of Fama magazine and points to the photos and asks, Like her music? She’s pretty, huh?

Then she looks at me like if I’m one of those stories you hear about on the ten o’clock news. Like one of those women who leave their kids in the car with the windows rolled up while they go grocery shopping. Or a story about some punk kid who molests a girl after school. Or some father who finds out his son’s gay and rams a broomstick up his butt until it bleeds. And whoever reports the story on the news channel has this concerned look over her face standing outside the hospital room where the son’s recovering. She looks into the camera and repeats what the father said to his son as he stood over him with the broomstick in his hand: You sure you want to be gay, son?

I’m Papi’s daughter, but still. That story is a true story and that boy was my age and when I saw him on television, I felt bad for him. I wanted to spit in that newscaster’s face, the way she pretended like she cared. To her it was just another story, but to that boy, he must’ve been sore, must’ve been hurting real bad and wondering what it was going to be like once he got home.

There’s a guy named Ricardo staying in one of the rooms on the opposite side of the building. He has dreadlocks that fall to his knees but he twists them the way you wring a mop and plops them on his head. One night we were watching The Price Is Right in the common room and he told me he liked to do something called blow. His foster parents found him cutting lines on the kitchen counter and that’s why they turned him in. That’s why he’s getting counseling. He said Casa de Esperanza is where they take kids when nobody wants them. After Tencha saw him she told me to stay away from him.

When I’m sitting by myself by the window doodling on paper, Julia comes up to me and tries to act like she’s my best friend. What are you drawing? she asks. I can help you. Why don’t you let me help you? Then she sits there, staring at me.

¿Y? It’s not like I’m a piece of news in the Chronicle she can pick up and read. It’s not like that. If anything, it’s a telenovela with a ranchera in the background playing so loud you can’t even hear your thoughts anymore. Like that movie Nosotros los pobres, when Pedro Infante is accused of killing his wife. He didn’t do it and only his daughter Chachita believes him. Half the movie is not knowing what happened, whether he killed her or not. Everyone thinks he’s guilty, but he’s not. He’s just poor. Chachita visits him in jail and pleads to the officers to let him go. She has braids in pigtails and throws her arms over her head like Hallelujah! She falls to the floor, crying with tears over her cheeks, all slobbery, all dramatic, like one of those old ladies at church who’s lost her husband, praying, ¿Por qué me haces esto, Señor? ¡Por favor, Dios mio!

Tencha says I should tell Julia whatever she wants to know. If I don’t want to talk then I should write it down because we have to get Papi out of jail. That way we can go home and be together again. The only way he can get out of jail is if I open up, she says.

"Why don’t you use the cards to help you, mama? Ándale. Write it down in a journal, like that they can see what happened. Like that they can see he didn’t do anything wrong."

At first, I didn’t want to. I didn’t feel like it. Besides, Tencha wouldn’t believe me. Or maybe she would. Maybe she knows what it was like but never wanted to believe it in the first place because she loves her brother too much. Either way, I’m keeping this as mine.

What I write is for You and me and no one else.

There’s this spider at the edge of my desk and she’s looking at me like if I’m her Virgen de Guadalupe. I don’t want her touching me or getting too close, and I know she’s not poisonous, but still. I could blow her off in one breath if I wanted to. I’m thinking of smashing her, then cleaning her off with my sock and acting like it never happened. But when I raise my hand and close my eyes I hear her scream.

Julia says the reason I don’t say anything is because I’m in deep pain. Like if pain were something she knew looked like me. I hear her when she talks to Tencha outside my room. Because I’m eleven she treats me like some kid. The way she looks at me, feeling sorry for me, scared, but at the same time frustrated. Like if answers are overdue and behind her pity she’s upset that I’m not cooperating.

I used to tell You I pray for Your will. ¿Recuerdas? I used to make the sign of the cross in the dark while I was in bed and tell you how much I loved You. That I wish for the best and I pray for your will. Well, I do, but maybe I’ll smash this spider. Mom used to say that life was full of tests. And if we pass, we’ll be in Your grace. Maybe if she named me Milagro instead of Luz this would’ve never happened.

If I wait for this spider to crawl out of this room, then maybe I can go after her. And on the other side of this wall there’ll be this underwater world and I’ll swim to the deep end and float next to one of those electrical fish that light up in the dark. And maybe he’ll sting me or split me into pieces or eat me alive. But then everything will be over and no one will remember because I’ll be down there in the dark with nothing around me. With no fish, no light. No Luz.

Then what?

LA CHALUPA

There’s a flea market on Alexander Street that we used to go to when I was little. It’s where we went to buy things like comales and molcajetes. They sold sheets and sheets of Lotería paper and I didn’t know it came rolled up like that. I didn’t know you could make your own tabla.

There was a round woman who sat in a canoe with flowerpots around her like if they were her children. Red flowers, pink, yellow, and purple. She wore a nightgown with thin stripes and had braids falling down her chest. Her name was Alondra. Estrella called her una pendeja because she was a grown woman dressed up like a Lotería card. But she wasn’t dumb. She made bracelets with all these different colors and would stitch your name on one if you asked. Two dollars apiece. She’d sit under the sun, even when it was ninety-five degrees outside, and braid her bracelets. We’d pass her on the way to the food stands, buy some barbacoa and tamarindo, then pass her again, and she’d be in the same place.

"Want something, Alondra? ¿Un Jarrito? ¿Algo? Ándale," Papi would say.

She’d close her eyes and tighten them, shake her head like if she were remembering someone who’d died. When she’d open her eyes we’d notice she wasn’t crying. No, no gracias, she’d say. No necesito nada. She’d open her arms and sweat would be glistening over her forehead.

I asked her to write a word on each bracelet I bought because I wanted them to read like a sentence. Ven. Que. Te. Quiero. Ahora. It’s the riddle to La Rosa, which is a strange dicho. I don’t know how a rose has anything to do with wanting or loving. But every time I thought of it I heard Mom’s voice and the way she’d say it in Spanish, all smooth and sexy like Sara Montiel: Come, I want you now.

And because quiero can mean either want or love, I asked if it meant I want you or I love you. Come here, because I love you, or, come here, because I want you? If you were saying to someone, come to me, then the person you loved wasn’t there, and if you had to tell someone to come to you then maybe he didn’t love you. And to want someone to come to you is like an order. If you have to order someone to come to you, how much love is in that anyway?

After Alondra made my last bracelet, I put it on my arm and she read them out loud from my wrist to my elbow. Ven. Que. Te. Quiero. Ahora. She opened her arms and hugged me the way Tencha does, with her body soft like pillows, and I understood why even though she was smiling sometimes she looked like she was in pain. She was confused of whether or not

Reviews for Lotería

[wellreadcatlady · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was surprised by Lotería, it was a very short read and very good. The story is told from a girl's diary and each entry is determined by what card from the loteria game is pulled. It goes back and forth from present time to the past showing what is happening in the center and why she ended up there. The characters were well defined and I feel like the author did a good job at telling a story of domestic abuse from a young girl's point of view.

[amandaabend · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, she retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of lotería cards. Each of the cards’ colorful images—mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars—sparks a random memory.Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, and the events that led to her present situation. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.This book was stippled with Spanish aphorisms and phrases, and included an impressive amount of vocabulary in-context, to help teach Spanish to non-speakers. A full deck of Lotería cards is presented back-to-front, to mark the chapters, as if the reader is flipping a card when turning the page, reminiscent of Isabelle Allende and Salvador Plascencia’s magical realism. Image result for loteria el nopal“I didn’t feel like remembering today so I laid out the cards close to each other so that they were touching like tiles, like El Nopal.” (175).Luz associates her memories with the Lotería cards, using them to prompt her, to spark her memories. Than she writes about it in her journal. As we read her diary — addressed to “You”, always capitalized, in reference to the reader, or in reference to a higher power — we understand the trauma she is trying to run from.The Arañas, the spiders, represent the memories that haunt Luz. Ghosts. They “creep around in the dark when you’re not looking” (2). And she wants to “smash this spider” (6), she wants to forget. “But when I raise my hand and close my eyes I hear her scream.” (6). Image result for loteria cards la aranaImage result for loteria cards chalupaIn La Chalupa, Luz recalls the riddle to La Rosa (“Ven que te quiero ahora.”) and philosophically reasons with her journal and the reader. She emphasizes the dual meaning in the use of the word quiero, which can mean either want or love, and how neither could truly be love:And because quiero can mean either want or love, I asked if it meant “I want you” or “I love you.” Come here, because I love you, or, come here, because I want you? If you were saying to someone, come to me, then the person you love’d wasn’t there, and if you had to tell someone to come to you then maybe he didn’t love you. And to want someone to come to you is like an order. If you have to order someone to come to you, how much love is that anyway? (13).The entire novel raises questions on important issues, like gender, sexuality, and the complications that arise for Mexican Americans who grow up caught between two cultures.Image result for loteria cards la manoThey’d pinch me if I called something a boy instead of a girl, or the other way around. Why is it La mano instead of El mano? I can think of Papi’s hands and think they’re masculine, then think of Mom’s and think they’re feminine. If we were talking about the hands of a clock it could go either way. The hands of a clock could be bi. (85-86).Rather than integrating the traditional riddles into her memories, Luz writes her own riddles, and begins to associate her life to the 54 Lotería cards. By writing in her journal and using the cards to prompt her memories, the reader relives the ‘accident’ with Luz; as the deck of cards is flipped, the story unfolds, piece-by-piece. In this way, she allows herself to remember, allows herself to feel the pain she is blocking out. Image result for loteria cards barril“No te olvides de dónde vienes.”Like if I would forget.” (62).Memory is a large theme in the novel: remembering, forgetting, knowing and not knowing. There is a difference between not knowing and forgetting, and forgetting something on purpose. Luz is not too proud to admit when she did not know something. In fact, the novel is littered with her asserting what she did not know, at the time. (“I didn’t know,” (11)) She often writes her regrets: “Because if I didn’t have fingers or hands maybe none of this would’ve ever happened.” (51). It is obvious that she is remorseful, sorry for whatever it is that happened, but it remains unclear until the end of the novel what she has to be sorry for. Zambrano’s writing remains mysterious and full of twists, until the very last chapter.“She used to say , forgive and forget, but I don’t think she believed it, because how can you forget about the things you feel?” (157).By the end of the novel, the reader can work out themes of domestic violence and sexuality, but more than anything this novel is about working through pain, memory, and forgiveness. Not only must the characters forgive each other – they must forgive themselves.I could not put it down, and finished it in less than 24 hours.

[shetreadssoftly · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It is slowly revealed what has happened to eleven-year-old Luz María Castillo and her family through diary entries she makes based on Loteria cards she draws from a deck in Mario Alberto Zambrano's debut novel Loteria. This is a tragic story told through the memories and in the voice of a young girl. The 53 chapters all open with the picture of a different Lotaria card. Luz is talking to God in her diary entries, as she contemplates her memories of her family. She is in state custody and not talking to anyone about her family. Very slowly the dynamics of her violent, dysfunctional family are reveal and we learn what was happening.

The chapters are short and the memories Luz shares are not all synchronous, but instead are recollected fragments of various family events and occasions from her lifetme. We learn about her father's drinking, the violence in her family, but the full extent of these occurrences isn’t revealed all at once. At the beginning we know something bad has happened, after all Luz is in state custody and not talking to anyone, but the total picture isn't revealed until much later.
Luz says of a counselor "Then she looks at me like I'm one of those stories you hear about on the ten o’çlock news."(pg. 3)
Later, when Luz writes, "She wouldn't know what it was like. We all fought. We all hit each other."(pg. 16) we begin to understand that this isn't going to be an easy story.

At the beginning of the novel you may feel a bit of disconnect with the story simply because you don't have even a partial picture of what is going on, but stay with it. Luz lets us know that she's cautious and not speaking to anyone when she says,"I keep my mouth shut because I don't know the rules of the game."(pg. 17) As she deals out the Lotaria cards for her own private game and writes about her life in her diary/journal, we understand the environment of violence and alcoholism that gave birth to her cautious nature.

The narrative, in English, also contains many Spanish phrases and sentences that are smoothly incorporated into the text. Since the Loteria cards are pictured in the book, it really is a much shorter novel than the page numbers would indicate. Zambrano has done an excellent job capturing the voice of this eleven year old girl in epistolary form while exploring the dark side of a very dysfunctional family.

Highly recommended

Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher and TLC for review purposes.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2.5**

Eleven-year-old Luz Castillo sits and deals the cards of her Lotería deck. She is in the custody of the state, and cannot (or will not) speak about what she has seen and done in her short childhood. But each card in the deck leads to a memory, and she writes her thoughts in the notebook her Aunt Tencha gave her.

This is a tragic story born of crushed hopes and poverty, and resulting in alcohol abuse, and violence. That there are children living in these circumstances is disturbing, and all too real. That they find any happiness and joy is a testament to the resilient human spirit. But most of Luz’s memories are far from happy. She has seen far too much for her young age, and hasn’t the maturity to understand or cope with the aftermath.

I really wanted to love this book. There is great promise in this idea for a novel, and there were some scenes where I saw the writer Zambrano may become. But Zambrano doesn’t give me a believable 11-year-old Luz. I know that children brought up in these circumstances gain vocabulary and behaviors that are not those of a white, suburban child. But somehow her voice just didn’t ring true to me. I kept hearing the male author telling the story, rather than the girl.

Still, it’s a powerful story and I’m glad I read it.

The book itself is a work of art, with beautiful full-color recreations of the Lotería cards at the beginning of each chapter. They brought back many fond memories of numerous games played with my grandmother and cousins.

[lahochstetler · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This novel is told as a series of diary entries written by eleven-year-old Luz Castillo. She is in state care. As the book unfolds it explains how Luz came to be in care, how her father came to be in jail, and why Luz refuses to speak. She tells her story with a deck of Loteria cards, making the not-so-subtle point that Luz's life bears a striking resemblance to a game of chance. The story itself is fairly predictable. It's easy to see where the narrative is going. Most readers are not likely to be surprised. The group home environment in which Luz finds herself was surprisingly benign, compared to pretty much everything I've read about the American foster care system. Luz's current residence is hardly the focus of the book, but it seemed unusually non-violent and understanding. The book is replete with beautiful illustrations. Each chapter is illustrated with its corresponding Loteria card. Ultimately I found that this book was not anything particularly special. The story was reasonably predictable. Luz is a sympathetic character, and it's not a bad read, but it's not earth-shattering either.

[ahgonzales · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book is narrated by a young girl and the style of writing seems appropriate to that point of view. It is told in a short story format, looking back on past events and slowly unfolding the story of the narrators situation in the present. The book follows themes of family and Mexican-American culture, while delving into some heavy topics. It is a very fast read with some Spanglish sprinkled throughout. I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

[viviennestrauss · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very sad tale, well told. I just wish there had been english translations for all the spanish phrases. The story was so fast moving for me, I didn't want to stop and look up translations constantly.

[cameling_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lotería are picture cards that are laid out and often played as a sort of Bingo. In this book though the lotería cards are used by an eleven year old girl who's been sent to some sort of institution and who refuses to speak. She has managed to sneak in a deck of lotería cards and writes surreptitiously in her journal about random memories of her sister Estrella, her parents and some of her relatives that live in Reynosa, just across the Mexican border. Her memories are triggered with each picture card. These memories don't follow any sort sequence, some memories are short or have no seeming relevance to her current state, but her journal entries share her experiences with us and how she felt about her parents' violent relationship, their challenge assimilating in the US, her sister's injury, her sexual abuse and her relationship with her aunt. This YA book ended with an interesting and unexpected twist.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First let me tell you what this wonderful little book looks like. It is about 9 x 6 in. and it is hardbound, no book jacket and on the front surrounded by a background of blue, there is a lovely red rose. The pages are thicker, so they do not tear easily. Loteria itself, is a Mexican game that is played somewhat like Bingo but using colorful cards and riddles and different patterns. Each chapter had a page with the picture of the card in beautiful colors. The presentation of this book is fantastic.Luz is eleven yrs. old when we meet her, she is being held in a type of juvenile home, where they have given her a journal and told her to write her story, since she will not speak about what has happened. She uses the cards to tell things good and bad, that have happened to and in her family. This story is not linear, she goes back and forth depending on what card she pulls. Eventually we learn what happened in her family. This is a frank and honest telling, from a young girls viewpoint about the things that needed to stay in her family. Family does not ever tell on family. The one card representing the bottle is especially poignant. As she says, "We tell our own stories. At the end she is offered a choice and although we now know what happened, there is still one big mystery in which the reader needs to furnish his own answer. Very realistic, will appeal to readers of Jessamyn Ward and Bonnie Jo Campbell and other cultural writers.

[bookscookslooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a powerful little book. I must admit that I think it was a bit over my head - it involves the slowly revealed tale of young Luz Castillo, currently in the custody of child protective services. Why? The reader doesn't know yet - Luz refuses to talk. The bits and pieces of her life with her father, mother, sister and aunt are slowly told through her journal entries with the use of Loteria cards - a Mexican bingo type game.Each chapter (and I use that term very loosely as some are mere paragraphs long) is introduced with one of the cards and Luz writes a bit about her life. The story is told through the eyes and thoughts of this 11 year old girl and the reader soon learns the horror of her life in a very abusive household. Her parents came to the US from Mexico to find a better life but they did not find it. The story Luz writes is rife with alcohol, tradition and her Catholic upbringing.There is a fair bit of Spanish used within the story - some can be gleaned from context but without a knowledge of the language (mine is minimal - I took it in college) there is some googling to do to try and maintain the storyline.The reader does feel a touch lost at first - at least I did as you just don't know what is going on. You are given bits of information that you need remember as each card is revealed. It all comes together in a very troubling story with an ending that I didn't see coming. Despite my feeling that a lot of things were over my head it was a book that caused me much thought and one I'll keep to perhaps read again. I suspect that I might sort more out upon a second reading when I'm knowledgeable of the outcome and I can then better understand the beginnings.It's not a long read by any stretch of the imagination but it is most assuredly a thought provoking one.

[nomadreader_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The backstory: Loteria is the first novel by Mario Alberto Zambrano.The basics: 11-year-old Luz slowly fill the reader in on her life and family by journaling based on Loteria cards, a Mexican version of bingo that uses images rather than numbers.My thoughts: Loteria is a complicated little novel. I say little because although it has 288 pages, I read it in about two hours, and I am not that fast of a reader. There are many short chapters and each one begins with a full-page image of a mostly relevant Loteria card. For much of the first half of this novel, I was confused. Zambrano doesn't introduce the reader to the story; he throws you right in. You have no context. Several times I found myself flipping to the publisher's description and wondering "did I miss that?" The more I read, however, the more details fall into place and Luz's writing makes more sense. I was glad I saved this novel for the airplane, as it was perfect to read in a couple of sittings over the course of an afternoon. There is a rich detail to this novel. As I was reading, I didn't know which details to savor or which were important. Consequently, I tried to hold as many in my brain as I could to try to make sense of the story.Because I had no context to Luz's life and little idea who she was, where she was, or what was happening, I had a hard time getting invested. I continued to read with a sense of urgency, and Zambrano manages to build to a somewhat satisfying conclusion. After I turned the last page, however, I couldn't shake the feeling this novel would be better as a short story. There's a fascinating climax, but because I never felt I knew enough about Luz to really be invested in her story, the ending, as good as it was, left me feeling much of the novel was unnecessary. It didn't enrich the heart of the story. It's worth noting that Zambrano also infuses a fair amount of conversational Spanish. I know enough to figure out those parts, but it might add to the confusion for some readers.The verdict: Loteria is a literary mystery of sorts. The reader must use the scattered clues left in Luz's journal to decipher who and what she is. While the climax is well done, this novel ultimately left me wanting either more--the perspectives of other characters too--or less of it

[maryann12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, the young girl retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of Lotería cards—a Mexican version of bingo featuring bright, colorful images.What follows are 53 chapters, each corresponding to a pictograph—beginning with “La Araña” (the spider) and ending with “La Rana” (the frog). The accompanying sketches assemble Luz’s fractious family life in equally jagged fragments, some tender as “La Dama” (the lady), others deadly as “El Alacán” (the scorpion). The two central figures in Luz’s recollections are her Papí, a tortured alcoholic who terrorizes his family, and her older sister Estrella, who pays a steep price for defying her father.Beautiful, haunting, titillating, tantalizing - all perfect descriptors for 'Loteria.' I honestly do not have one complaint about this book. It is well thought out and very interesting. A very well written novel with suspenseful dark and twisty turns. Brings a whole new light to an old favorite childhood game.Overall, Loteria is creative and provides a glimpse into a world not often explored. It's a good read, a rather quick read, and that cover is just gorgeous.I would highly recommend this book to anyone.