From the Harvey and Lulu award–winning creator of Artbabe comes this riveting story of a young woman’s misadventures in Mexico City. Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, heads to Mexico City to “find herself.” She crashes with a former fling, Harry, who has been drinking his way through the capital in the great tradition of his heroes, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Harry is good—humored about Carla’s reappearance on his doorstep—until he realizes that Carla, who spends her days soaking in the city, exploring Frida Kahlo’s house, and learning Spanish, has no intention of leaving. When Harry and Carla’s relationship of mutual tolerance reaches its inevitable end, she rejects his world of Anglo expats for her own set of friends: pretty-boy Oscar, who sells pot and dreams of being a DJ, and charismatic Memo, a left-wing, pseudo–intellectual ladies’ man. Determined to experience the real Mexico, Carla turns a blind eye to her new friends’ inconsistencies. But then she catches the eye of a drug don, el Gordo, and from that moment on her life gets a lot more complicated, and she is forced to confront the irreparable consequences of her willful innocence. Jessica Abel’s evocative black–and–white drawings and creative mix of English and Spanish bring Mexico City’s past and present to life, unfurling Carla’s dark history against the legacies of Burroughs and Kahlo. A story about the youthful desire to live an authentic life and the consequences of trusting easy answers, La Perdida –at once grounded in the particulars of life in Mexico and resonantly universal–is a story about finding oneself by getting lost. Grade 10 Up–Twenty-something American slacker Carla moves to Mexico, land of her long-lost father. She crashes at the apartment of her ex-boyfriend, a wealthy, WASPy American who socializes mostly with people like himself. Carla soon meets some locals, wannabe revolutionary Memo and wannabe DJ Oscar. After moving in with Oscar, she becomes less engaged in society, rarely interacting outside of this limited group. As she becomes even less involved, her naïveté allows some horrible events to occur. While readers see the writing on the wall long before Carla catches on, she is still a sympathetic heroine. This is Abels first full-length graphic novel after her Artbabe comic and collections (Fantagraphics), and its both simple and ambitious. The black-and-white artwork is sketchy, but evocative. The story is intricately plotted and suspenseful. The decision to write the first chapters dialogue in Spanish, translated at the bottom of the panels, is interesting. Later, when Spanish is spoken predominantly, all of the dialogue is in English, putting words that were actually spoken in English in brackets. This not only reflects Carlas move into Spanish, but also allows readers to feel more strongly her lack of knowledge upon arriving in Mexico. The lengthy glossary defines Spanish words, phrases, vulgarities, and characters and places referenced in the text. Abel has successfully portrayed characters both on the fringes of society, and those who wish that they were. –Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. *Starred Review* The comic-strip short stories in Abel's Mirror, Window (2000) and Soundtrack (2001), while compelling and closely observed, sometimes seemed as insubstantial and directionless as their twentysomething slacker protagonists. The book-length La Perdida, however, is a major leap forward for her. It follows young half-Latina Carla as she rejects the U.S and heads for Mexico in a misguided search for her roots and meaning in her life. Moving in with ex-sort-of-boyfriend Harry, who hangs out only with other expats, Carla seeks the authentic Mexico and gets more than she bargained for when she falls in with leftist politico Memo, who calls her a "conquistadora," and small-time drug dealer and DJ-wannabe Oscar. Naive Carla learns that, while aimlessness and poverty might be temporary for young, white Yankees, it can morph into violent desperation in an impoverished country. Besides developing a more purposeful narrative, Abel has progressed in her artwork. Her line is less careful and more confident, employing strong brushstrokes to capture the characters' personalities and the Mexican settings. In her previous work, Abel was a talent worth watching. La Perdida delivers what the watching was for. Gordon Flagg Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Jessica Abel’s La Perdida is rich, engrossing, and memorable—a true graphic novel.” —Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics “Put down your dog-eared Love and Rockets and read this. Fans of Los Bros will recognize a kindred spirit, but Abel is every inch her own artist. Her tale of Carla’s catastrophic folly is fierce and unforgettable.” —Susan Choi, author of American Woman and The F