First published 2024
On October 18, 2019, Cristina Rivera Garza travels from Texas to Mexico City with a formal request for the attorney general. She identifies herself as the relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, murdered on July 16, 1990. Twenty-nine years have passed since an abusive ex-boyfriend killed her sister. Rivera Garza now pursues the path toward justice that was never completed. She reconstructs Liliana's story through handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, and interviews with those who knew her. Liliana emerges as a spirited young woman who fell in love with a handsome but possessive man. In her final summer of 1990, she experienced newfound freedom, traveling and thinking more expansively than ever before. Rivera Garza applies her expertise as scholar, novelist, and poet to document her sister's life and examine the trauma that continues to shape her own identity and activism today.
Genres: biography, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, crime, activism, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Mexico City, Texas
Period: 1990, 2019
320 pages · Paperback · Hogarth
Content warnings: abuse, domestic-violence, murder