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Mary Camarillo went to work for the Postal Service after high school. It might be genetic; both her grandfathers were railway mail clerks. She sorted mail, sold stamps, balanced the books in the accounting office, went to night school to get her degree, earned her CPA, authored countless audit reports, and then started writing fiction. Her short stories and poems have been published in The Sonora Review, The Bookends Review, Lunch Ticket, and The Ear, among others. This is her first novel. She lives in Huntington Beach, California, with her husband, who plays ukulele, and their terrorist cat, Riley, who has his own Instagram account. She lives in Huntington Beach, California.
2022 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition Finalist 2022 Los Angeles Book Festival Honorable Mention in Regional Fiction 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner in First Novel (Over 90,000 words) 2021 American Fiction Awards Finalist in Women's Fiction A family is thrown into chaos in 1990s Southern California in Camarillo's debut . . . and the novel's ending is a satisfying one. An emotional portrait of three women dealing with unexpected change. -Kirkus Reviews Camarillo's prose is lively, companionable, and quite satisfyingly observant in ways that surprise and delight, as if a friendly someone you know well is murmuring in your ear, giving you living presences, using history as the canvas across which the drama takes place. Bravo! -Richard Bausch, award-winning author of Peace and Hello to the Cannibals The Lockhart Women is deeply and thoroughly Southern Californian-in all the perfectly detailed cities and streets and, of course, freeways, but also in the evocation of its time: the 1990s. These women in this page turner-flawed and desperate and seeking redemption-are vivid portraits. -Susan Straight, award-winning author of In the Country of Women With control, compassion, and surprising humor, Camarillo dissects how a modern family comes apart. . . . Unputdownable. -Eduardo Santiago, PEN Emerging Voices Rosenthal fellow and award-winning author of Tomorrow They Will Kiss and Midnight Rhumba Like Mona Simpson's Anywhere but Here, The Lockhart Women sensitively illustrates what happens to children coming of age under the influence of childish parents. But unlike Simpson, Camarillo provides hope that everyone-parents and children-can grow and develop. An authentically hopeful and realistic novel. -Shelley Blanton-Stroud, author of Copy Boy . . . an intimate portrayal of a Southern California working class family that splinters apart when the father leaves. Brenda Lockhart and her two daughters are complicated and not always admirable characters, but they are relentlessly human. Camarillo laces their story with concise prose, dry humor, and flinty realism, allowing love, resilience, hope and eventual forgiveness to shine through. -Samantha Dunn, bestselling author of Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life O. J.'s famous white Bronco flight and his trial for murder is the perfect backdrop for this story of a mother and her two daughters watching their lives implode. Great writing, compelling and fast-paced, The Lockhart Women is impossible to put down. -Diana Wagman, award-winning author of Spontaneous and Extraordinary October The Lockhart Women make mistake after mistake in this delightful debut novel, but that's part of their charm. Touching on themes of motherhood, fidelity, and responsibility, this is a coming-of-age tale for both Brenda and her daughters, teaching us that the indelible bonds of love can steer families through the roughest of passages. -Julie Zuckerman, author of The Book of Jeremiah This is a gripping, sometimes funny, novel that will keep you turning the pages. -San Francisco Book Review
