LatinaLista — In Evenings at the Argentine Club, writer Julia Amante introduces readers to the Argentine Club, a place where families meet on Sundays for entertainment and as a place of refuge to preserve their traditions.
In the close-knit Argentine-American community of Burbank, California, there are rules about marriage, family, money, and success. Tradition dictates that you must stay close to those who know you best.
All her life, Victoria Torres has done what was expected of her dictated by her father. Although Victoria loves her family with all her heart and wants to make her father proud, she also silently regrets not finishing college and pursuing her dreams of becoming ‘someone.’
One weekend, during an evening at the club, Victoria meets Eric Ortellis, the son of her parents’ best friends. Slowly, her dreams are reawakened and her long-held desires rekindled, including feelings for Eric, the bad boy who left the closed-knit community and went off on his own.
Eric and Victoria are two different people with the same culture background who fall for each other to the dismay of both of their families.
The choices Victoria makes disappoint her father, even though he has never appreciated just how really smart is his daughter. Victoria finds herself caught between trying to please her family and making a life of her own.
it isn’t long before secrets are spilling out of marriages. Generations are shifting in and out of conflict, and the dream of a better life for their children, held so tightly by the older generation, starts to morph into something new.
Everything is changing in a place where everything has always stayed the same.
Evenings at the Argentine Club is an absorbing novel that sheds light into the Argentine immigrants living in the United States. Yet the story’s themes and family dramas explored in the novel are universal.
Jo Ann Hernández is assistant Bookshelf editor and author of the award-winning “White Bread Competition” and “The Throwaway Piece,” as well as, creator and publisher of BronzeWord Latino Authors web site.
