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AuthorsLive is excited to welcome Melissa Rivero to discuss her stunning debut novel The Affairs of the Falcóns, a beautiful, deeply urgent novel about the lengths one woman is willing to go to build a new life, and a vivid rendering of the American immigrant experience and is the winner of the 2019 New American Voices Award and a 2020 International Latino Book Award. The book was also longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Prize, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.

In The Affairs of the Falcóns, Ana and her husband Lucho, along with their two young children, have fled the economic and political strife of Peru for a chance at a new life in New York City in the 1990s. Being undocumented, however, has significantly curtailed the family’s opportunities: Ana is indebted to a loan shark who calls herself Mama and is stretched thin by unceasing shifts at her factory job. To make matters worse, Ana must also battle both criticism from Lucho’s cousin—who has made it obvious the family is not welcome to stay in her spare room for much longer—and escalating and unwanted attention from Mama’s husband. 

As the pressure builds, Ana becomes increasingly desperate. While Lucho dreams of returning to Peru, Ana is deeply haunted by the demons she left behind and determined to persevere in this new country. But how many sacrifices is she willing to make before admitting defeat and returning to Peru? And what lines is she willing to cross in order to protect her family? 

Melissa Rivero was born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Brooklyn. Undocumented for most of her childhood, Rivero became a US citizen in her early twenties. Her writing has taken her to the VONA/Voices Workshops, Bread Loaf, and the Norman Mailer Writers Colony. In 2015, Melissa was an Emerging Writers Fellow at the Center for Fiction. She is a graduate of NYU and Brooklyn Law School and currently works on the legal team of a startup. She still lives in Brooklyn, with her husband, two sons, and their rescue dog. 

Read the review in Kirkus Reviews.

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