El Paso Matters – ‘Witches of El Paso’ by Luis Jaramillo explores characters’ supernatural gifts

Luis Jaramillo’s fantasy fiction book, “The Witches of El Paso,” chronicles the tale of Nena and her grandniece Marta, whose stories intertwine over different timelines and their desire to lead different lives.

Nena’s story is told over three different stages of her life, starting when she was a teenager in El Paso in the early 1940s. She experiences premonitions and fainting spells, leading her to fear she might become like the local curandera. She embraces her supernatural powers, but not before discovering her “magic” comes at a price.

Now in her 90s, Nena reaches out to Marta, a lawyer, to help her search for a daughter she left in the past. That’s when Marta begins to uncover her own supernatural gifts.

“The Witches of El Paso” is the El Paso Matters Book Club’s first selection of 2025.

MORE BOOKS: 2024 El Paso Matters Book Club featured books

Now an assistant professor of creative writing at The New School in New York City, Jaramillo is also the author of a short story collection, “The Doctor’s Wife.” He grew up in California and has lived in New York City the past 25 years. During his youth, he lived briefly in El Paso, where his grandmother and great aunts long lived.

“In some ways, El Paso feels like a spiritual home for me,” he recently told the LA Times in a feature in its “De Los” cultural section.

Jaramillo will participate in the El Paso Matters Book Club events in the coming months, and his book will be featured at this year’s Texas Book Festival in Austin in November.

For now, check out this excerpt from “The Witches of El Paso,” follow along with our reading schedule and stay tuned for event announcements.

Excerpt, “The Witches of El Paso” by Luis Jaramillo, Chapter 2

For part of May and all of June, Nena had been hearing a hum, a noise that vibrated along the surface of her skin. Nena had been afraid to ask her sisters if they also heard it, knowing she’d be scolded for speaking again about things that no one else heard or saw, like the flickers in the corners of her vision, or the whispers of people long dead. It was 1943, and no one was supposed to talk about sustos and corazonadas anymore. But her sisters definitely saw the ladybugs that followed Nena around. Every time Nena went anywhere, from the kitchen to the bathroom, to the Obregons’ grocery store, to the post office, las mariquitas came with her, a swarm of little red dots clinging onto her clothes, like living embroidery. When the ladybugs came too close to Olga, she brushed them away, saying, “Que bonita!” how pretty, in a high-pitched voice that meant the opposite. Luna squashed as many of them as she could reach.

Ever since their parents had died, Nena and her sisters had lived all together on West Overland Avenue, so close to the Rio Grande that from the street corner they could see Mexico. Olga was four years older than Nena, and Luna three. When Nena was growing up, she watched them, not sure if she would end up more like Olga or more like Luna.

One was smart, the other was beautiful. Olga polished her shoes without being told, she kept her pencils sharpened, she didn’t chew her nails. She did her homework long before it was due, and she prayed every night, using the rosary Papá gave her for her first Communion. Olga was awarded a full scholarship to Southern Methodist University, and Nena had been very angry on her sister’s behalf when she wasn’t able to go, there not being enough money to pay for travel or books.

And then there was Luna. When she was six, she took a knife and chopped the heads off a half-dozen chicks. When Mamá asked her what she was doing, Luna said, “I’m playing butcher.” In high school, Luna wanted to be a gangster’s moll, and she dressed the part, wearing skirts that she hemmed very short. She was a cheerleader for Bowie High School, and she was so famously beautiful that young men from other high schools asked her to dances.

Now that Nena was no longer a child, she understood she would never be like either of her sisters, and that was fine with her. In the spring, she’d fallen in love with the movie For Whom the Bell Tolls. Señor Obregon’s daughter Fina worked at the Palace Theatre ticket booth, and Fina had always said that Nena could come as much as she wanted for free. After her ninth viewing, Fina’s boss said Nena couldn’t come to the theater anymore.

It didn’t matter, because by that time, Nena had memorized all of the dialogue in the movie. She’d never seen anyone as beautiful as Ingrid Bergman, who played Maria, an orphan and a fighter with short-cropped hair and too-big trousers, neither of which stopped her from having a grand romance. But who most fascinated Nena was the character Pilar, a fierce commander of anti-fascist partisans who could ride a horse and shoot a gun better than any of her men. And like Nena, Pilar saw things other people couldn’t.

Excerpted from the book “The Witches of El Paso,” by Luis Jaramillo. Copyright © 2024 by Atria/Primero Sueno Press. El Paso Matters Book Club selection, January 2025.

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