Summer of the Mariposas

In this young adult retelling of The Odyssey from award-winning author Guadalupe García McCall, Odilia and her four sisters journey to Mexico to return a dead man to his family and encounter magical creatures along the way.

When Odilia and her four sisters find a dead body in the swimming hole, they embark on a hero's journey to return the dead man to his family in Mexico. But returning home to Texas turns into an odyssey that would rival Homer's original tale.

With the supernatural aid of ghostly La Llorona via a magical earring, Odilia and her little sisters travel a road of tribulation to their long-lost grandmother's house. Along the way, they must outsmart a witch and her Evil Trinity: a wily warlock, a coven of vicious half-human barn owls, and a bloodthirsty livestock-hunting chupacabras. Can these fantastic trials prepare Odilia and her sisters for what happens when they face their final test, returning home to the real world, where goddesses and ghosts can no longer help them?

Summer of the Mariposas is not just a magical Mexican American retelling of The Odyssey, it is a celebration of sisterhood and maternal love.

Guadalupe García McCall is the best-selling author of Summer of the Mariposas and won the Pura Belpré Award for her first novel, Under the Mesquite. She is a full-time author and abuelita and lives with her husband in South Texas. Find her online at ggmccall.com.

David Bowles is a Mexican American author and translator from South Texas, where he teaches literature and Nahuatl at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. Among his forty published books are the multiple-award-winning They Call Me Güero, Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico, and The Prince & the Coyote, as well as the series Garza Twins, 13th Street, and Clockwork Curandera. He is the current president of the Texas Institute of Letters.