The Monsters of Chavez Ravine Wins Gold for Fantasy/Science Fiction

COMMUNITY NEWS The Monsters of Chavez Ravine Wins Gold for Fantasy/Science Fiction

The Monsters of Chavez Ravine, by Capitola author Debra Castaneda, won the gold medal for Englishlanguage fantasy/science fiction at the International Latino Book Awards.

The novel, her second, tells the fictional story of residents in the Chavez Ravine area of Los Angeles resisting eviction by the city to make way for a public housing project, battling demons summoned to frighten people into moving away.

Debra Castaneda “The history of the evictions is the backdrop for this novel, but the story is really about a plucky young woman and her quirky group of friends who band together to fight monsters terrorizing the old neighborhoods of Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop, which most people know as Chavez Ravine,” said Castaneda. “It’s part adventure, part love story, and it’s about people doing what they can when faced with overwhelming odds.”

The evictions of the primarily Mexican American residents in the 1950s have been in the news recently due to a protest at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game in September. Dodger Stadium was built in the Chavez Ravine area after the public housing project was canceled, years after most residents had left.

Castaneda’s mother, aunts, uncles, and cousins were among the thousands of residents displaced.

“There are some amazing nonfiction books about the residents being forced from their homes in the old neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine,” Castaneda said. “I wanted to tackle the topic through the lens of fiction, which allowed me to give the characters a bit more agency, and something to fight against other than city officials and the evictions. Since I love horror and fantasy, I set the story in 1952 when there were only 200 people left in the ravine — which is pretty eerie — and introduced monsters that come out at night.”

She said the plucky young woman is “loosely based on what I imagined my great-aunt Vita to be like at that age, except Trini Duran is taller and a good shot. Vita was a woman ahead of her time — independent, feisty, and a small business owner. She ran a successful Mexican restaurant in L.A. for years.”

The Monsters of Chavez Ravine is available on Amazon.com in Kindle for $2.99 and paperback for $7.79. An audiobook will be available on ACX, Audible, and iTunes soon.

Growing up, Debra Castaneda spent most weekends in Boyle Heights, listening to her grandmother’s spooky stories. She was a radio and television journalist before she turned to writing novels. She has also written a series of young adult novels called Surviving Hillside, set in Northern California and featuring a teen heroine who is Latina. See www.debracastaneda.com. When she’s not at her computer, Castaneda enjoys long walks, making Mexican food, binge-watching creepy shows, and texting her two daughters. She lives with her husband in Capitola. Finalists for the International Latino Book Awards come from the U.S., Puerto Rico, and 19 other countries. The awards are produced by Empowering Latino Futures, a nonprofit co-founded in 1997 by Edward James Olmos and Kirk Whisler. n