“El Niño burns with a radiance and intensity. It speaks in tongues as all visionary art does. …the novel refuses conventional borders and strategies. It doesn’t compromise.” –Kate Braverman, Los Angeles Times. Originally published by Viking under the author’s real name, Douglas Anne Munson, in 1990. "This is a wonderful book, expertly crafted, well written, lyrical, devastating, universal in its cry from the heart for the suffering heaped on innocence. El Niño is a book that will help lighten and light another dark corner of our minds." --Hubert Selby "An eloquent book that s so tough you have to read it with clenched teeth." --Daily News "El Niño burns with a radiance and intensity. It speaks in tongues as all visionary art does. ...the novel refuses conventional borders and strategies. It doesn t compromise." --Kate Braverman, Los Angeles Times Sandy Walker works child abuse cases for the Los Angeles juvenile delinquent court as a defense attorney. Like her fellow attorneys, she has learned to distance herself from her clients, using the law as a shield to keep their crimes and their lives from touching her. Sandy fights a daily battle to keep her equilibrium in a madhouse of abuse and denial. But something or someone is trying to pry its way past the bottles of brandy, past the guilt and self-loathing, into her heart. Could it be Manuel, her young Mexican lover, all hard muscle and carefree manner? Or Francisco Gomez, the tall, good-looking police officer who suddenly wants to be part of her life? Or Malver Lopez, a young ward of the court who was victimized by one of Sandy s clients, and is in desperate need of a friend? Or perhaps the ghost of her abusive father, still haunting her dreams? Whatever it is, whoever it is, it wears a disguise of time-worn ritual, and a mantle of corrosive compassion and it will change Sandy in ways she could never have imagined. Douglas Anne Munson was born in Crossville, Tennessee on February 17, 1948. Her childhood was spent moving from town to town before her family finally settled in southern California. Douglas attended the University of New Mexico, where she majored in Latin American studies. She then attended the UCLA school of Law and became an attorney. In 1990, Douglas published a novel called El Niño, then went on to publish two mystery novels under the name of Mercedes Lambert--Dogtown in 1991 and Soultown in 1996 featuring attorney-turned-sleuth, Whitney Logan and her adversarial ally, Carmen. After leaving the law profession, Douglas moved to the Czech Republic, where she was diagnosed with a return of the cancer she had successfully fought in the late 1980s. Douglas returned to the United States in 2001, and died on December 22, 2003 at a hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut. A final novel in the Whitney Logan series, Ghosttown, was published posthumously in 2007.