Seven years ago, while visiting my hometown of Cañon City, Colorado, I got inspired to write about growing up there and also from listening to a Mexican American author interviewed on NPR. She talked about how being Chicana and living in two worlds switching from our Mexican culture to a white world. I called my published poet sister Juliana Aragón Fatula and invited her to come to Dillon Beach, California, for a writing workshop the following summer.

 

 

We spent two heavenly weeks at the beach writing, editing, and reading old notes we wrote to each other in junior high and high school. I wrote my first 50 pages of River of Love; she helped me push past my fear of writing.

 

 

We were "townies" that friended the preppies at a private, parochial school. We made friendships and memories that make us who we are. River of Love launches September 24, 2019, by Homebound Publications. Become immersed in a world of two brown girls growing up in the shadow of the 1960s.