Inspired by Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Pat Mora brings us the poetic monologues of Encantado, an imagined southwestern town.

Each poem forms a story that reveals the complex and emotional journeys we take through life. Mora meanders through the thoughts of Encantado’s residents—the mothers and sisters, brothers and fathers in whom we see slivers of ourselves and our loved ones—and paints a portrait of a community through its inhabitants’ own diverse voices. Even the river has a voice we understand.

Inspired by both the real and imagined stories around her, Mora transports us to the heart of what it means to join in a chorus of voices. A community. A town. Encantado.

Pat Mora is an author, speaker, educator, and literacy advocate. She has written more than forty-five books for adults, teens, and children. Her poetry collections include Chants, Borders, Communion, Agua Santa: Holy Water, Aunt Carmen’s Book of Practical Saints, and Adobe Odes; her books of nonfiction include Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle and the family memoir House of Houses. The recipient of two honorary doctorates and a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“Mora transports the reader to the heart of what it means to join in a chorus of voices, a community, a town.” – Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education

“Encantado is a holy book. Its honest people and voices, the affecting cadence and clarity of two languages so gently well-woven, [and] the encouraging lives of compassionate humans heal our souls. Pat Mora has given us a wondrous gift.”—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners

“‘[D]eparted spirits return / to Encantado as stars, / meander / down dark streets and hallways, / peer into windows . . .’ reads the title poem in Pat Mora’s collective portrait, recalling Juan Rulfo’s Comala in Pedro Páramo. What we have, then, are indelible portraits of Lupe, Barbara, Señor Ortega, and Stella—to name a few—populating the town of Encantado, fictitious or not . . . ‘in another time, in another place’ but breathing fully in these indelible poems.”—Francisco Aragón, author of Glow of Our Sweat

Praise for Pat Mora:

“Ms. Mora’s poems are proudly bilingual, an eloquent answer to purists who refuse to see language as something that lives and changes.”— New York Times Book Review

“Mora celebrates the ordinary in unordinary lyrics.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Mora’s imagery contributes intensely to her spare and minimalist poems... [her] poems both instruct and delight.”—Texas Books in Review
 
“[Mora’s] voice is multifaceted: tender, humorous and joyful but also profound.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Mora’s radiance and exuberance are simply enchanting.”—North American Review