The Willa Literary Award Finalist for Original Softcover Fiction, 2019, Awarded by the Women Writing the West

Girls from Centro

by Juni Fisher

Teresa sells souvenirs to tourists in the marketplace in Centro, the heart of Nogales, and feeds her father's fighting roosters. It's all she's ever known. When a letter promises a better life in the United States for Teresa, her mother, and her sisters, they leave home under cover of darkness, like so many before them.
      Ana, a young, single mother, cooks at a convent and orphanage until she receives an offer she can't refuse from a wealthy employer in Arizona. She walks away from the convent, her religion, and Centro, swearing never to return.
      For two women, a generation apart, a border fence and bone-littered desert are the least of what separates subsisting in Sonora from surviving in Arizona.
      In her debut novel, Fisher crafts a richly textured, multi-layered story of depravity, family bonds, and sacrifice for women who dare to dream of life beyond borders.

Praise for Girls from Centro

Juni Fisher has written a story as bold as breaking news headlines covering the tragic perils of hopeful, honest emigrants lost in border deserts in search of a better life in the United States. The reader will have to turn pages quickly to figure out and follow the maze of conflicting characters, both heroic and evil, in a spell-binding dash to the final five words. There is more than one dramatic movie in this novel set in abusive American ranch lands, unholy Catholic orphanages and frightening cults of early day Mormonism.
~ Warren Lerude, Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist

These gripping parallel stories are straight up and honest to the bone. I found each character saturated with an authenticity I have rarely run across in border stories. Juni has a savage eye for authentic detail that kind of takes your breath away. It also kind of pisses me off, but that's the envy talking.
~ Bob Boze Bell, executive editor True West magazine

This may be Fisher's debut novel, but this is not the last we will hear from her. Many people talk about writing a book 'someday.' This talented author sat down and did it, and did it well. She is a powerful storyteller with an interesting twist of imagination. Readers from all walks of life will find something to love about those girls from Centro who are just trying to get by, trying to make a life. I look forward to having more Fisher books on my shelf someday.
~ Amy Hale Auker, author of The Story is the Thing and Ordinary Skin

Juni Fisher unveils her formidable storytelling skills while blending prose and poetry in Girls from Centro. She adeptly builds suspense in a type of handmaid's tale, that's not from some dystopian future, but from the recent past. Her love and knowledge of nature and the Southwest shines throughout.
~ Phil Lewis, retired editor, Scripps Howard Newspapers

Author JA Fisher delivers in this, her debut novel. A well crafted story of generations of women struggling to survive the seedy world of human trafficking and cult religion. Each character introduction is woven in a way that leaves the reader hungry to see where the character fits as the pattern of the story reveals itself. This book is a page-turner that I recommend to anyone who likes a well executed read.
~ Mary Matli, winner of The Georgie Sicking Poetry Award

Juni Fisher's superb tale of love, betrayal, tragedy and triumph, though set in the recent past, is as vivid and relevant as today's headlines from the Arizona border. Beautifully written and ingeniously structured, it is a slam-dunk winner.
~ Ranger Doug, author and songwriter