A Little Love

Equipped with more twists and turns than a telenovela, and generously salted with Spanish and Spanglish phrases, this lighthearted debut novel resembles a Hispanic Joy Luck Club crossed with Laverne and Shirley. Four Latina women--Isabel, Julia, Mercy and Lucinda--are close friends. They all live in Miami, and they're all rich and powerful, but not one of them is lucky in love. Since her divorce from a ""gringo,"" Isabel, a Cuban and a perfectionist, has been devoting all her time to her successful engineering career. Julia, a well-known Mexican-American author, is engaged to a dreamboat, but she begins to question her love for him when she meets a lovely female flamenco dancer. Lucinda, a Dominican, has a perfect existence--wealth, beautiful children, and a handsome husband--until she discovers her husband is seeing another woman. Mercy is an ambitious real estate agent who flits from man to man in search of her knight in shining armor. All attractive and intelligent, the women drive expensive cars and wear designer clothing. Except when it comes to love, they're well aware of what they want in their lives and how to get it. On the surface, this is a story about their quests for romance, but the deeper theme concerns roots and power. An awareness of the burgeoning economic power of Latinos, particularly Latinas; the crisscrossing of different Latino cultures in the U.S. without loss of identity; and the unity of Latino families across generational divides--all anchor this buoyant fiction. There are clich d moments but, overall, this is a tart, mischievously funny narrative, clever, warmhearted and true to its richly textured protagonists. (July)