Traveling Light: a novelita

IPPY AWARD WINNER / BRONZE MEDAL, BEST REGIONAL FICTION, SOUTHWEST

＂Traveling Light will resonate deeply with long-time residents of Santa Fe and further entice others to visit this magical place...＂-Jo-Ann Mapson, Award-Winning Author of Owen’s Daughter, Solomon’s Oak, Hank & Chloe, Blue Rodeo, Bad Girl Creek, The Owl & Moon Café, among many others.

Camelia Delmonico feels as if she’s tangled in a web of wrong turns.

Her dreams are haunted with visions of a world that doesn’t quite exist, but her reality isn’t much better. Her job and brief marriage are in tatters; among her scattered friends, no one seems to have the life they want. And when a tragedy strikes and brings Camelia and her friends miserably together, will anyone’s search for a happy life become reality? She knows that tequila and Santa Fe is a dangerous mix. But when mixed with sand, surf, and human compassion, perhaps the local mezcal is truly a magic elixir. It’s true what the locals say: mezcal es medicina.

It’s dawn on a slushy Santa Fe February in 1994, and a sleepy, hungover Camelia finds herself on what she realizes too late is a fool’s errand. Over too many margaritas with her friend Melanie Sullivan the night before, she has agreed to go to the Sullivan family’s small resort in southern Mexico in search of Melanie’s missing teenage son Nico. Camelia figures she has nothing to lose. But when she encounters her friend Luis Sabio in the Oaxaca airport while en route to the coast, her simple plan strays dramatically off course. Like the prized waves sought after by young surfers on the beaches of Oaxaca, Camelia’s presence creates more than a few ripples in the lives of everyone she encounters, especially Eric Steadman, a Santa Fe ex-pat with dark secrets and too much time and mezcal on his hands.

In beautifully descriptive prose that evokes both the sunlight and the shadows of life in desirable resort towns, Traveling Light: a novelita follows the lives of Camelia and her friends in Santa Fe and Oaxaca as they struggle to face themselves, their complicated relationships, and the consequences of chasing their dreams.

＂Friends entwined in each other’s lives make choices out of love for them and yet end up dealing with their own life issues in the process in this circular story of love and loss and continuing on. Traveling Light will resonate deeply with long-time residents of Santa Fe and further entice others to visit this magical place-stuffed to the brim with carving out a life, realizing the simmering racial tensions inherent in New Mexico’s complex history, feeling the pull to ancient Mexico, and the realization that once you are in the City Different, you can never really let it go.＂
-Jo-Ann Mapson, Author of Owen’s Daughter, Solomon’s Oak, Hank & Chloe, Blue Rodeo,
Bad Girl Creek, The Owl & Moon Café, among many others