Blurbs for PATRON SAINT
"Lauren T. Davila’s debut unleashes a lyrical, feminist voice marked by intimate authenticity and fearless curiosity. Each woman's uncanny story threads evolution and transformation through a lens of magical realism and the raw beauty of California landscapes—the Pacific salt, tumbled sea glass, and earthy aromas of mole. I left this collection with an appetite for more."
— Sadie Hartmann, Bram Stoker Awards® winning author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered
“Infused with Southern California magic.”
— Francesca Lia Block, author of Dangerous Angels and House of Hearts
“These stories read like a dizzying, dazzling tour of Los Angeles—one the average hop-on, hop-off bus won't dare go on. You’ve got to know the right ghostly guide, the right freeway exit, the right all-night diner to gratefully stumble into. You’re in good hands with Lauren T. Davila, whose imaginative tales wind with warmth and hope through sun-bleached deserts and fog-slung forests, onto sunken piers, and into the tricky depths of celebrity, love, longing, inheritance, and ambition. The Patron Saint of White Menageries is a memorable, charming, tightly woven collection about those who see what others can’t, and are themselves not what they seem.” ”
— Kristina Ten, author of Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine
"A love letter to LA, The Patron Saint of White Menageries is a versatile collection of stories haunted by dancing ghosts, shiny shark teeth, a deadly flask, and the curious taste of clouds. Lauren T. Davila expertly weaves wonder, yearning, and hope with just a sting of sea salt. Davila is a writer to watch."
— L.L. Madrid, author of My Lips, Her Voice
“Davila’s debut short story collection, The Patron Saint of White Menageries, glitters with supernatural wonders and ghost-filled landscapes. From gothic dread to themes of heritage and reclamation, each story encompasses endings and beginnings at their highest, irreverent pitch.”
— E. P. Tuazon, author of A Professional Lola
“In The Patron Saint of White Menageries, women and girls choke back hard truths and scrabble at the locked doors of family secrets. Horror waits for them in the California wilderness, from dead mothers emerging from oil-black water to lost friends vanishing into ostentations of peafowl, but freedom waits there too. Davila’s heroines escape the mundane into the uncanny. An unearthly and melancholy book.”
— Molly Olguín, author of The Sea Gives Up The Dead