“Nicholson blends the trenchant politics of Barbara Kingsolver with the emotional insight of Sue Miller. . . without qualification: take the road to Esmeralda.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Joy Nicholson has fashioned a riveting political thriller, a searing love story, and ultimately a literary novel so wire-taut you will cut your fingers trying to hold onto it....” —Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight and I, Fatty

“With The Road to Esmeralda, Joy Nicholson evokes perfectly the menacing ambiguities of contemporary living, as experienced by an American couple in Mexico. Reminiscent of Graham Greene and Malcolm Lowry, her novel charts, in the most minute increments, our inability to escape ourselves, suggesting that destiny may be as much a matter of where we come from as who we are.” —David L. Ulin, editor, Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology

“Edgy, seductive, hallucinatory, ominous.” —Stokes Howell, author of The Sexual Life of Savages and Other Stories

“In this Americans-in-trouble-abroad novel, Nicholson takes us into a remote Mexican tropical village unlike anything advertised in a travel magazine...her story is thrilling and seductive.” —Maria Amparo Escandón, author of Esperanza's Box of Saints and Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Co.