CITY OF SMOKE AND SEA

A young woman struggling through a series of setbacks finds herself involved in a murder investigation surrounding her beloved grandmother’s death.

All narrator Queenie Rivers ever wanted to do was write. But once she drops out of college and leaves New York for LA with her deadbeat boyfriend, everything goes wrong. Stuck working jobs she hates for more years than she’d have liked, a car accident almost claims her life. Gran, her Roma grandmother, takes care of her and helps her land a “recovery” job at a restaurant owned by a shadowy friend named Wyatt Jones. Queenie’s world turns upside down yet again when she walks into Gran’s house one day to find her grandmother dead on the kitchen floor. Shattered and in need of answers, she begins reading Gran’s secret journal and talking to Wyatt and his mysterious friends. Weaving realism, history, and fantasy, Márquez takes readers on a journey through co-extant layers of reality. The two most mundane involve Gran’s immigrant journey to Los Angeles and the murder investigation. The third and most extraordinary follows both Gran and Queenie’s involvement with beings who control the air, earth, water, and more, and who recognize Gran as one of their own. In Márquez’s skilled hands, a murder mystery filled with intriguing characters and wondrous twists becomes a richly compelling narrative about a woman’s encounter with—and acceptance of—the gifts of her own imagination as she seeks truths about her past, herself, and her place in “the ebb and flow of existence.”

A unique multilayered story that will enchant readers with its blend of magic, mystery, and fabulist fantasy.