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 Ordóñez, 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