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Ernesto Vega has lived many lives, from pig farmer to construction worker to famed luchador El Rey Coyote, yet he has always worn a mask. He was discovered by a local lucha libre trainer at a time when luchadores—Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes—were treated as daredevils or rock stars. Ernesto found fame, rapidly gaining name recognition across Mexico, but at great expense, nearly costing him his marriage to his wife Elena.
Years later, in East Los Angeles, his son, Freddy Vega, is struggling to save his father's gym while Freddy's own son, Julian, is searching for professional and romantic fulfillment as a Mexican American gay man refusing to be defined by stereotypes.
With alternating perspectives, Ernesto and Elena take us from the ranches of Michoacán to the makeshift colonias of Mexico City. Freddy describes his life in the suburban streets of 1980s Los Angeles and the community their family built, as Julian descends deep into our present-day culture of hook-up apps, lucha burlesque shows, and the dark underbelly of West Hollywood. The Sons of El Rey is an "epic and transporting novel" (Alejandro Varela, National Book Award finalist and author of The Town of Babylon) of a family wading against time and legacy, yet always choosing the fight.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 11, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781668032800
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781668032800
- File size: 6306 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 15, 2024
Espinoza (The Five Acts of Diego Leon, 2013) brings three generations of a Mexican American family to life, along with their life in la lucha, Mexico's popular wrestling sport featuring masked athletes. El Rey Coyote is the luchador alter ego of patriarch Ernesto Vega, who is on his death bed. El Rey Coyote was a t�cnico, the good guy in the Manichean logic of this sport-spectacle of carefully crafted, elaborate rivalries. This immigrant family's struggles to survive and thrive in their native country (in the luchador business) and in their adopted one (by opening a gym) is complicated by the secret drama of Ernesto's closeted homosexuality. Each family member, including Elena, Ernesto's deceased wife, tells their part of the family story in short, punchy chapters. There's Julian, the baby of the family, named for Ernesto's best friend and partner (and perhaps something more); his father Freddy/Alfredo aka El Rey Coyote Jr.; angry and resentful Elena; and El Rey Coyote himself. From rural Mexico to Ajusco, the outskirts of Mexico City to Los Angeles, their stories unfold in surprising ways.COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from April 29, 2024
Espinoza (Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime) returns to fiction with the arresting story of an elderly wrestler’s last days. Ernesto Vega is visited while in hospice care by his son, Freddy; his gay grandson, Julian; the ghost of his wife, Elena; and a manifestation of his lucha libre persona, El Rey Coyote. Elena and El Rey Coyote press Ernesto to reexamine his life and his competing devotions to wrestling, his marriage, and his close childhood friend Julián Tamez. Meanwhile, Freddy, who once performed as El Rey Coyote Jr., agonizes over having to permanently shutter his father’s East Los Angeles gym, which never bounced back after the pandemic lockdowns, and Julian, an underpaid community college professor, chafes at being fetishized by other men for the color of his skin. The seamlessly interwoven story lines bring each character to vivid life, and Espinoza shines in the lucha libre scenes (“The crowd gasping, unmoving as they witnessed the flurry of leaps and jumps, the swirling colors and lights, these men doing such incredible things, things no mortal was ever expected to do”). This is a knockout. Agent: Eleanor Jackson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.
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