Overview

Adriana Elizabeth Herrera Bowen, a Latina living in Riverside California, is an eleventh grader who loves horses more than people. School is hard. She wants to win the All-Around Cowgirl saddle more than anything, but her parents make choices that disrupt her plans and force her to make drastic decisions.

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9781955969161

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Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera roped me into this novel as skillfully and artfully as a prize-winning cowgirl ropes a calf. I loved getting to know Adriana and her complex circle of friends, family, and animals, loved being immersed in the compelling, high stakes world of junior rodeo. Breaking Pattern is a moving, energizing coming of age story, one that helped me see a region I thought I knew well in fresh, illuminating light. I can't wait to read whatever Reichle-Aguilera writes next! Gayle Brandeis, author of My Life with the Lincolns and Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss Breaking Pattern is the kind of book I wish I could have read growing up. Tisha Reichle-Aguilera has written a winning novel, showing us a place and people we hardly see in fiction. The main character, Adriana Herrera Bowen, is a fabulous heroine, a California junior rodeo competitor who loves the rodeo more than anything else in her young life. Negotiating her surroundings as a bi-racial, Mexican daughter who is determined to set her own path in life, Adriana is funny, fierce, full of grit, and delightfully messy. You'll want to stay at the rodeo with Adriana and root for her until the end of this charming and irresistible story. Dana Johnson, author of In the Not Quite Dark and Elsewhere, California Breaking Pattern renders the world of junior rodeo with such skill and detail, readers will see the dust, smell the horses, and hear the roar of the crowd. A former teenage rodeo queen herself, writer and scholar Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera has created a layered and engaging young adult novel that introduces us to a diverse set of southwestern teenagers, adults, and animals, and she deftly succeeds at making the reader fall in love with each of them. At the center of the story is its feisty, yet kind protagonist, Adriana Bowen, who'll do anything to help her family, friends, and animals, even when it puts her at risk. She's a joy to root for whether she's navigating a complicated relationship with her mother, struggling to fit into a dress for her cousin's Quinceanera, or competing in the rodeo ring. Beautifully written with a sophisticated perspective on race, class, and sexuality, this is a fun and wildly exciting debut. Toni Ann Johnson, Flannery O'Connor Award-winning author of Light Skin Gone to Waste

Author Information

Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera writes so the desert of her childhood can be heard as loudly as her urban adulthood. She earned an MFA at AULA and a PhD at USC. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit.

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