Like Son — Felicia Luna Lemus

An “exuberant [and] smart” novel of love, family, the fluidity of identity, and the mysteries of the past (Publishers Weekly).

Set amid the outsider worlds of twenty-first century downtown New York, 1990s Los Angeles, and 1940s Mexico City, Like Son is the not-so-simple story of a love-blindness shared between a father and a son. Born a bouncing baby girl named Francisca Cruz, Frank Cruz is now a post-punk thirty-year-old who has inherited his dead father's wanderlust, unrequited love, and hyperbolic tendencies. From the author ofTrace Elements of Random Tea Parties, this is a “powerfully written chronicle of love, in which gender is irrelevant, and the siren call of the past threatens the present” (Booklist).

“Frank Cruz -- born as a girl named Francisca, but living and identifying as a man -- is a loner from Southern California. His father, diagnosed with terminal cancer, offers Frank tragic stories of the Cruz family, a key to a safe deposit box and an arresting 1924 photograph of a beautiful woman named Nahui Olin, a bohemian Mexican artist/poet from an aristocratic background. Frank (who narrates) learns that Nahui had many lovers, lived transgressively and was endlessly wooed. When his father dies, Frank sets off for New York and lands in the East Village, where he meets and falls in love with Nathalie; she eerily reminds him of Nahui, whose face and history have now obsessed him. Their relationship is solid until the horror of September 11 throws them into chaos and sadness that tests their relationship, and Frank's self-image. With her blunt prose, Lemus doesn't waste a word in this smart, never sentimental identity novel.” -- Publishers Weekly