Muñeca

Oakland, 1968. Natalia Fuentes, known as Nati, is a queer, working class Latine witch who keeps hearing talk about Violeta Miramontes. Violeta is the young heir to a fortune built on Spanish colonial wealth, and a mysterious illness has left her paralyzed. Nati knows enough about witchcraft to suspect the cause is not medical at all.

Seeing a chance to lift the curse and collect a generous reward, Nati talks her way into the Miramontes house as Violeta's caretaker. Inside, she soon finds that her suspicions were right. Someone has put a spell on Violeta, and the questions of who did it and why only grow more pressing the longer Nati stays.

As the two women grow closer and a romance takes hold, Nati becomes more reckless with her powers and with her own heart. Her rescue mission also drags up the ghosts of her past, ones she had hoped were gone for good. This surreal, Gothic debut novel asks how far a person will go to save someone they love, even if the price is their own ruin, and it mixes chilling scenes with tender ones.