Dagoberto Gilb is ';one of the most powerful writers in his generation, and The Flowers is perhaps his best book... Not to be missed' (Larry McMurtry). Sonny Bravo is a sensitive, unusually smart fifteen-year-old who lives with his vivacious mother. But when she marries an Okie building contractor, they are uprooted to a small apartment building in a city where prejudice is not just white against black, but also brown. As Sonny meets his new neighbors, he is inexorably ensnared in their lives: Cindy, a married, bored, drugged-up eighteen-year-old; Nica, a cloistered Mexican girl who cares for her infant brother despite never being allowed to leave her apartment: Pink, an albino black man who sells old cars in front of the building; and Bud, a muscle-bound construction worker who hates blacks and Mexicans, even while he's married to a Mexican-American woman. In arguably his most powerful work yet, Dagoberto Gilb has written ';a psychologically complex novel' that transcends age, race, and time, displaying the fearlessness and wit that have helped make him one of America's most authentic and original voices (The Washington Post).
