Steven Ramirez

COLL001
12/11/14

THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK

Brando Skyhorses novel is the authors attempt to get the unique culture, history, and
changing face of one of Los Angeles oldest neighborhoods, Echo Park. Were the Battle of
Chavez Ravine, is home to thousands of Latino immigrants after WWII, Echo Park has recently
become one of the citys most known districts, resulting in a displacement of families and
memories. The Madonnas of Echo Park is like both a love song and a response to this
transformation: it preserves and celebrates the vibrancy of community, while at the same time
acknowledges the march of time that continues to the present.

The book is populated with characters, each a resident of Echo Park and each with their
own tale. A reader is going to meet Hector, a laborer and illegal who is asked to make a hard
choices and life-changing event; Beatriz, an elderly who has an encounter with the Virgin Mary;
Felicia, a domestic worker that is having a problem about her troubled relationship with her
daughter, Aurora; Efren Mendoza, a anti-immigrant that drives the bus who witnesses raciallymotivated mob violence; and the ex-con Freddy, who upon release from a long stint in prison
comes back home only to discover how much the area has changed. Memory, miracles, mystery,
and tradition all intersect within the novels pages, and successfully creates a literary mural of
Echo Park.

The sense of community is strongly show in the book, owing chiefly to the structure

that Skyhorse has employed. Although the book is made into a novel, it is in actuality bites of
stories from resident in the area of Echo Park. While each story stands different, characters come
back in each others stories in surprising ways. Each voice brings to the book make different
view on the neighborhood, ranging from Efrens too. Also, many stories are linked by a common
event: like for example senseless drive-by shooting that leaves a little girl dead and changes the
life of each character in some way. Each offers their response to the tragedy, and each story
gives the reader more emotional of the individual as well as the community.

Despite everything that happens in the novel, and what to admire there are stories do not
feel entirely authentic. What contributes to the fact that every story is written first-person, a
choice that many writers find it limited. Take, for example, the case of the elder though her
character clearly has a long past in Echo Park city that stretches to the Californios and though
there is no example her pursuing any type of formal education, the author choices to not match
his characters experience. She uses insults such as for example sniveling cur and her uncles
screaming as contralto shrieking, language that doesnt put the readers perception of the person
and experience of the character. And yet, behind Skyhorses book writes that all of the character
is based on real Echo Park residents. Despite its imperfections, The Madonnas of Echo
Park leaves most reader with an impression that the author cares about the characters.