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LOCA

By: Alejandro Heredia

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Paperback | 2 July 2026 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Format
Paperback

Dimensions(cm)
19.9 x 13.0 x 3.4

Paperback

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Longlisted for the Center of Fiction First Novel Prize 2025

It's 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he's held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo. Free-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she'd escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo's worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other.

Industry Reviews

"Heartfelt, captivating, and poignant, Heredia's debut novel shows how friendship not only connects people to each other but also anchors them to the many facets of their own selfhoods...A novel of losses and returns, Loca encourages readers to seek out their own definitions of home." - Booklist Online

"In this remarkable debut, Alejandro Heredia traces young lives from the streets of Santo Domingo to the streets of the Bronx, capturing the heartbreak of queer youth, a woman's rebellion against the confines of motherhood, and, above all, the pain and power of friendship that extends across seas, and borders, and the struggle of working people to survive in America. It is the most generously written novel I have read in a very long time, and that generosity is a beautiful thing." - Pulitzer Prize and National Award Book Award finalist for Imagine Me Gone and You Are Not A Stranger Here

"Heredia writes to all the locas who, torn between depression and desire, dare to keep moving, chase dreams, and face their failures nonetheless." - New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last

"In a novel that is as tender as it is brilliant, Heredia writes with ferocity and warmth." - author of Family Lore

"A queer book, yes, a Dominican book, too, a Spanglish book, sure, and as such a quintessentially American novel, a beautiful one." - New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind and Entitlement

"Eloquent and vibrant. Alejandro Heredia is a deeply gifted writer." - author of This Strange Eventful History

"The tension, love, curiosity and sometimes downright confusion within Loca reads as real...It's giving a pulsing, vibing transnational transcultural setting." - The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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