Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award

…De la Cuesta’s novel maintains an accumulating power which holds onto a reader’s attention not only through the forceful figure of Ordonez, but by demonstrating acutely how ordinary lives are impacted by the underlying social and political landscape. Compelling reading.

–Tom Tolnay, publisher,

Birch Brook Press and author of Selling America and This Is the Forest Primeval

Barbara de la Cuesta’s The Spanish Teacher has everything to thrill you–pace, a great balance of description, gesture and action, charmed, perfectly-tuned dialogue, and most notably, a character we follow as closely and sympathetically as if we were living right there inside the story with him… So many books show us a character who seems to capably hang and move like marionettes from the strings of a fairly competent puppeteer, but rarely do we see a full drama like this, where every bit of the writing extends from, grows out of, is part and parcel with the author’s complete realization of and connection to her character…

–Don Berger, judge for the Gival Press Novel Award