Montserrat Fontes

First Confession

"It brings to mind Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Carson McCullers' A Member of the Wedding. . . . A most original and darkly powerful work." —Judith Freeman, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Mexican-American writer Fontes tells a startling tale of the clashes between men and women, rich and poor, Mexican and American in this dark story of life just south of the Texas border. Two spoiled children, the willful Andrea and her cousin Victor, take up spying and stealing when they discover where the town hooker hides her money. Their theft tragically unleashes a series of events, among them murder and suicide.

"Montserrat FOntes has listened to the rhythms that connect two languages, and divined a voice like nothing I've read before: Carson McCullers with a Spanish accent. First Confession invited me into the rich, dark place where life reveals itself to wide-eyed children, and it kept talking to me for a long time after I'd turned the final page." —Barbara Kingsolver

"A splendid tour de force. I picked the book up and could not put it down. . . . She renders the border-life in all its stark and realistic darkness. . . . The children, Andrea and Victor, are alive and full of light, carrying in their hearts a bit of each of us." —Jimmy Santiago Boca

"Through the eyes of [the] small heroine, a wicked but touchingly vulnerable little girl . . . First Confession enjoys a robust plot and multidimensional characters. . . . Fontes's greatest talent, though, is her ability to see and define the world through the senses of a child." —Philadelphia Inquirer

"Simmering first novel. . . . Writing with a vivid sense of character, class, culture, and place, Fontes has produced a novel as nasty, compelling and horrendous as childhood itself." —San Francisco Chronicle