A Heart on a Shelf

What is this?

It’s the title to quite a good self-pubbed novel, a copy of which has come to me via a friend and subscriber to this site.

A Heart on a Shelf’s author, Diana Negrete Monahan, is actually Mexican-born and currently lives with her husband over near Sisters.

Her authentic story, set in Tijuana ca 1953, has got me buzzed-up enough to say I will write a quality review - which I have, at this time, pretty much no idea how to do.

Here is my review’s first few paragraphs as it stands today; the 1st sentence will fit Amazon where A Heart on a Shelf is available at this writing:

I see you’ve read the back cover text of A Heart on a Shelf. You realize you just might be looking at the story that will tell you definitively how intensely a young Mexican woman’s personal ambition coupled with the power of her natural love of heart and home clashes with a traditional Mexican culture that squirms as it tries to force itself on her.

But you also know such a novel could be written with an agenda - in a downtown Manhattan coffee shop and still, with a few carefully-researched details, seem authentic.

With my reading of the first two chapters of A Heart on a Shelf, my doubt about Diana Negrete Monahan’s origin shed its entire skin.

You want to read A Heart of a Shelf because the clear Hispanic “voice” of this daring, personal new novel speaks insistently, authentically, communicating both a perfectly wonderful humility of expression and  intense Mexican pride and heat.

A Heart on a Shelf is “Pura Raza!” as it is said, “Us!”

You do.

Get it. Go to Amazon and get A Heart on a Shelf.

Diana will make you think about how tough it is to live in millennial Mexico.