Part fiction and part memoir, La Quinta Soledad is narrated by 62-year-old Quinta Soledad, a neighborhood typist and scribe from Barrio Anita in Tucson, Arizona. She tells a multigenerational Mexicana/Chicana family story of"oro molido" memories that center on her strict and unforgiving abuela, Nana Conchita; her single mother, Lola, who loves to sing and dance; and her four older blossom sisters: Dalia (la Dolly, the frustrated artist who looks like Joan Baez), Magnolia (la Maggie, who loves animals and speaks in her own peculiar language), Orquídea (la Orky, the incessant liar and beautiful wannabe actress who is the best cook in the family), and Azucena (la Susie Mae, the lover of Gabriel García Márquez and expert on plants and saints' birthdays).
After a barrio shoot-out, Lola convinces her great granddaughter and daughters to take her to the fiesta del milagroso San Francisco the following day in Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, Mexico, where she and her mother, Nana Conchita, were born. Thus, plans are made for what turns out to be a rowdy female family road trip where la Quinta Soledad not only ends up confessing her"sins" and indiscretions with her divino tormento, Chevo, to el milagroso San Francisco, but also reconciling her difficult past and the sordid espantos that have haunted her dreams.
A native of Tucson, Arizona, Silviana Wood received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and has been involved in the local theater community since the 1970s. She is known for her bilingual comedies and dramas as well as for being a professional storyteller, actor, director, and teacher of literature and Chicano Theater. Silviana has twice won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from the University of California, Irvine: once for Short Story, and once for Drama. In 2016, Barrio Dreams/ Selected Plays by Silviana Wood was published by the University of Arizona Press.