The Five Acts of Diego Leon

For readers of The Chaperone and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, a thrilling, unforgettable novel about an unusually gifted young man who leaves Mexico for Hollywood in the late 1920s, determined to pursue his dreams-no matter the cost.

July 1917, Mexico: Orphaned by a fever that took his mother's life and a civil war that left his father a broken man, 11-year-old Diego Leon is sent to the provincial capital to live with his aristocratic grandparents. There, they try to forge a new identity for young Diego, rewriting his past and grooming him to take over the family business. The only relief from this suffocating life are his warm, kind music teacher and her son, from whom Diego is inseparable. But when his grandparents force an engagement with a woman he doesn't love, Diego finally snaps, leaving his fractious country behind. He heads for Hollywood, where silent films are just transitioning into "talkies," and Prohibition is in full swing. But thousands of miles from home, in a land full of people out for themselves, will Diego ultimately find the love and acceptance he seeks? In this moving novel about ambition, love and identity, Diego Leon discovers that living your dreams can come at a cost.

Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico. He came to the United States with his family at the age of two and grew up in suburban Los Angeles. Author of the novel Still Water Saints, he received an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. A recipient of the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Espinoza is currently an associate professor of English at California State University, Fresno.