María Amparo Escandón Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

María Amparo Escandón is a Mexican-born American writer and film producer.

She was born June 19, 1957. Her father was a construction contractor and her mother did professional training for Mexico’s Labor Department.

She is the oldest of four children. She grew up in Mexico City and was sent to study at thirteen years old in Minnesota. She discovered English in the rural area and then read One Hundred Years of Solitude when she came back to Mexico. It was there that she got inspiration for her career.

She studied communication in Mexico City and then got married for a brief time to a man named Luis Gil. She would then immigrate tot he United States, co-found Acento, and marry Benito Creel. She returned to studying, this time in visual arts, and took ceramics at the Otis College of Art and Design.

She published a variety of her short stories in Spanish. After being in America for a decade, she took a creative writing workshop held at UCLA Extension so that she could learn writing in English. She was invited to be part of the teaching staff just a year later.

She shares two children with her husband. They divorced in 2006. Today she splits her time between Mexico City and Los Angeles.

The author wrote her first book in 1999, titled Esperanza’s Box of Saints. It was published by Simon & Schuster. The Spanish version of the book is titled Santitos and was released by what is now Random House. Her second novel came out for the first time in English in 2005 and then in Spanish. The story is set in a Mexican prison and in America and deals with a number of themes including passion, crime, and forgiveness. She also contends with her own relationship with her father, who passed three days after the completion of her manuscript. Her third novel to be released was titled L.A. Weather and was a best seller on the New York Times as well as being a Reese’s Book Club selection. The story contends with the Alvarado family as they deal with betrayal against potential evacuations of a drought and fire-filled season.

Escandón has taught Creative Writing at UCLA Extension. She has also served as an advisor for the Sundance Screenwriters Labs in Brazil and Mexico, as well as fiction workshops in Barcelona, and serves as a mentor for young minority writers who are up and coming a the PEN Center’s Emerging Voices Program.

She also belongs to Frijolywood, an official Hollywood Mexican Filmmakers’ association. She also wrote the screenplay Santitos, based on her Esperanza’s Box of Saints novel, at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. The film ended up being produced by John Sayles and directed by Alejandro Springall in Mexico. It was Mexico’s third-largest grossing film for the year in 1999 and was released in Spain and Latin America in 2000. The film has gotten awards at 14 different film festivals globally.

The author has also completed a screenplay based on her Trucking Co. novel. The film is actively being developed through her own production company. She also started working in 1982 as a copywriter in Mexico City while studying for her communications degree. In 1983 she moved to Los Angeles so that she could start Acento, a full service agency that serves the Latino and Latin American markets in the United States in a variety of areas. The business was sold in 2009 and she waited three years to fulfill the non-compete, founding Leagas Delaney America in 2012.

María also launched a prison book club, the first ever to exist, and an author series with Wings for the Soul in 2005. The program took place in Corona, California at the California Institution for Women. It gives female inmates the chance to meet four times a year where they read and talk about a certain book with the author. The books are typically written by women and about women in subject.

María has been picked as a Writer to Watch by the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek Magazine. Her books have also frequently been selected as the annual book selection for various Community Reads public library-funded projects. She has also had her short stories published in magazines and journals in Spanish and English.

She has also funded the content production company The Other Truth Productions, LLC. She has a variety of projects for television and film there that are in different stages of development. She is developing a television mini-series titled Mudflap Girl that is based on her second novel, as well as a screenplay titled Moishe is Moishe that was co-written with Pepe Stepensky.

The author is frequently invited to be a lecturer, keynote speaker, or panelist at writing seminars, conferences, book expos, film festivals, colleges, universities, fundraisers, and other events.

Esperanza’s Book of Saints is the first book to come out from María Amparo Escandón. If you are looking for a fresh new story, then you may really like this book that people like Oscar Hijuelos are calling ‘sweet and entertaining’!

This is about a young widow and her search to find her missing child. The journey will take her from a simple village in Mexico to Tijuana to Los Angeles and more.

She’s been rescued by her favorite saint from turmoil. Now Esperanza is going on a journey that may end up teaching her quite a bit while testing her faith and turning her from a religious innocent to a woman who is devout but also independent and sexual. Interesting and emotional, this debut from the author is well worth a try!

Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Co. is the second book by María Amparo Escandón. If you love a good story that is pretty unique, check this story out for yourself.

Libertad González finds a way to pass the time in prison in Mexico with a weekly Library Club. There she decides to read to the other inmates from any types of books that she can find in the small supply available in the prison.

A story comes out though that doesn’t have anything to do with one that’s actually in a book. She tells the story of a fugitive of the Mexican government and a prior literature professor who finds a new life and reinvents himself in America as a trucker.

There he falls for a woman who is totally wild and shares his life and truck with her until he finds himself with a baby girl and alone on the road. Thus his Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Co. is invented.

He makes the 18-wheeler cab their shared home, and they grow up sharing everything, from food to memories. But then she becomes a woman, and when she encounters one man, everything could change. Pick up this intriguing story to go on the journey as well!