Pushcart Prize Nominee Desiree Zamorano’s Amado Women, set in Southern California, ground zero for upwardly mobile middle-class Latinas. Mercy Amado, who despite her drunken, philandering (now ex-) husband raises three daughters and becomes a teacher. Now she watches helplessly as her daughters drift apart as adults. The Latino bonds of familia don’t seem to hold. Her daughters each navigate their own dramas until everything they know comes crashing down in a random tragic moment. Mercy must somehow make what was broken whole again.