A brilliant writer of place and character, Morales is also a fast-paced and finely-tuned stylist, delivering deeply emotional stories with “ripped-from-the-headlines” resonance. If ever there was a “writer to watch,” he’s it—the third of six children, Morales is a young, media-savvy author who has lived the stories he tells—from growing up in a tough Tucson neighborhood to putting his first set of “brand new” school clothes on layaway with the money he earned from his boyhood paper route, and from becoming a father at age eighteen to becoming the first member of his immediate family to graduate from college. A few of the chapters from this novel appeared in a 2008 chapbook published by Notre Dame’s Momotombo Press. The collection received rave reviews in academic circles and the Latino community, where the novel is eagerly anticipated.