A quixotic South American social reformer and the aimless North American schoolteacher who falls in love with him are caught in a dangerous web of deceit and revenge when they are drawn to the Andes by the promise of great wealth.

The Gold Mine (Discoveries)

de la Cuesta, Barbara

Romance

Latin American Literary Review Press

"Art gotta be high up and dangerous," the graffiti artist tells his mother. It has to be practiced diligently like playing the piano, the longtime members of a life drawing studio believe, and if your view of the model is the model's backside, you don't move for a better view. Art is a mysterious way into your model's sorrow when words fail. Art can open the rooms of your childhood. It existed before there was perspective. It can even be a dinner party. It can make a still life come alive, and it can heal a wounded spirit. Barbara de la Cuesta taught and worked as a journalist in South America. She now teaches Spanish. Her novel, The Spanish Teacher, was winner of the Gival Press Fiction Prize. About her most recent novel, Adam's Chair, Lauren Stafford, of the Manhattan Review of Books, wrote: "A tapestry of literary elegance... A contemporary novel for the ages."

Life Drawing

Literature & Fiction

Austin Macauley Publishers

In this narrative prose poem, Priscilla, home health aide, college dropout, social activist, sets out to work on her bicycle at dawn. Passing the old woolen mill, she meditates on the city's history and her family's part in its founding. As she visits her clients in their apartments, the space shuttle Columbia orbits above, sending down messages, the mayor visits the Sunshine Club, a parachutist lands in Leary Field, an AA meeting takes place in the basement of the Italian Church... Evening comes. Priscilla feeds her children. Called back to work, she suffers a long-feared bicycle accident, is taken overnight to the hospital where she has some ecstatic and revelatory thoughts about her survival. Dawn comes, the shuttle lands.

Rosamundo

Poetry

Finishing Line Press

Adam's Chair

Genre Fiction

Atmosphere Press

Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award. "...De la Cuesta's novel maintains an accumulating power which holds onto a reader's attention not only through the forceful figure of Ordonez, but by demonstrating acutely how ordinary lives are impacted by the underlying social and political landscape. Compelling reading."--Tom Tolnay, author of Selling America 
"...The Spanish Teacher has everything to thrill you--pace, a great balance of description, gesture and action, charmed, perfectly-tuned dialogue, and most notably, a character we follow as closely and sympathetically as if we were living right there inside the story with him...."--Don Berger, judge for the Gival Press Novel Award

The Spanish Teacher

Literary

Gival Press

Praise for Barbara de la Cuesta's previous novel,  The Spanish Teacher, winner of the Gival Press Novel Prize... "The Spanish Teacher has everything to thrill you—pace, a great balance of description, gesture and action, charmed, perfectly tuned dialogue, and most notably, a character we follow as closely and sympathetically as if we were living right there inside the story with him. . . rarely do we see a full drama like this, where every bit of the writing extends from, grows out of, is part and parcel with the author's complete realization of and connection to her character." —Don Berger, judge for the Gival Press Novel Award "de la Cuesta's novel maintains an accumulating power which holds the reader's attention not only through the forceful figure of Ordonez, but by demonstrating acutely how ordinary lives are impacted by the underlying social and political landscape. Compelling reading." —Tom Tolnay, author of Selling America and This Is the Forest Primeval

Carl, Willi, and Blanche

Humor & Satire

Plain View Press

"There were little sins and big sins, and if you committed too many little sins you were more likely to go on to the big ones. Some sins you did in your mind and then, sometimes, you went on to let yourself fall into them." Darkly witty and compulsively readable, Barbara de la Cuesta's novella lets us into the private life and secret thoughts of Rosa, an undocumented home health aide grappling with menopause and her unruly body, unexpected romance, grown children who alternately worry her and fill her with pride, and how life is confronting her with everything she has ever denied herself or hidden away from. Rosa is a natural storyteller, insightful in hindsight about her own motivations and unflinching in her willingness to look at the girl she was and the woman she has become. Rosa is a daring, funny, and emotional story about a woman moving her life out of the margins and into the sun with the power of confession.

Rosa (The Driftless Unsolicited Novella Series)

United States

Brain Mill Press

Black Lacquer Press & Marketing Inc.

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Books by de la Cuesta, Barbara