By Annie Luxmore
I sat at a small red table inside Taqueria Vallarta in Santa
Cruz, several minutes early for my interview with local author,
Nina Marie Martinez. After reading her novel,
¡Caramba! A Tale Told in Turns of the Card, I imagined a woman
with a deep and complex personal history, a woman full of charisma,
style and grace.
By Annie Luxmore
I sat at a small red table inside Taqueria Vallarta in Santa Cruz, several minutes early for my interview with local author, Nina Marie Martinez. After reading her novel, ¡Caramba! A Tale Told in Turns of the Card, I imagined a woman with a deep and complex personal history, a woman full of charisma, style and grace. She walked in a minute later, right on time, and after spending an hour and half with Nina, she was more than I had expected. Add funny and magnetic to the list.
Martinez grew up in Hollister, the only daughter of a Mexican-American prune picker turned carpenter turned building contractor and a German-American housewife. She grew up in an English-only household, even though Spanish was her father’s first language. As a child, Martinez gazed at her Mexican roots and culture from afar.
“At my house, the jalapeno was very political,” said Martinez. “My father was only allowed to put three jalapenos in the meat when he was cooking. It was very symbolic – she was keeping the other culture at bay.”
At 14, Martinez’s parents divorced, and in the absence of her mother, she witnessed her father’s re-immersion into the culture that he was born to.
“He was listening to music in Spanish and dating women named Chella,” said Martinez. “It was very intriguing. I had always related more to my Mexican family.”
Martinez promptly put “learning Spanish” on her to-do list.
Following the trauma of attending six different high schools in a short period of time, and after her parents’ divorce, in her junior year, Martinez dropped out of school. At 20, she then found herself pregnant and had to prepare to carve her own path as a young single mother.
Martinez got her GED, set up her own business re-selling thrift store and vintage clothing, and began attending classes at Gavilan College. She also began surrounding herself with the Mexican culture that she so longed for and soon learned Spanish, due in large part to many days spent at flea markets selling clothing.
“I’m an immigrant to my own culture,” said Martinez. “It wasn’t something that was handed down to me. I had to cross that border myself.”
During her time at Gavilan, Martinez first began to discover her gift for writing.
Her English teacher had published a small book and she asked her to sign a copy. The teacher replied that Martinez would be signing a book for her someday.
Martinez soon transferred to the University of California at Santa Cruz and majored first in literature and then in creative writing. She graduated with 300 pages of ¡Caramba! under her belt.
¡Caramba! A Tale Told in Turns of the Card was published in April, and is a fun, lively, but also complex tale of six main characters living in the small California town of Lava Landing, complete with artwork, color and a unique design.
Lava Landing, population 27,545, is known for The Big Five-Four – a bar with a bucking bronco, numerous loncheras (lunch wagons), drag queens who hold Tupperware parties and strive to keep femininity alive, a born-again Christian mariachi, a famous cheese factory and a rumbling volcano. The town is actually based on many of the towns in the area – Hollister, Gilroy, Watsonville, Castroville.
The two heroines, Natalie and Consuelo have been best friends for 20 years and are both employed at the local cheese plant. Their biggest conflict is discovering how to conquer Consuelo’s fear of traveling more than 30 miles from their hometown. When Consuelo’s father, Don Pancho, a tall, dark, handsome – but dead – man, comes to Natalie in her dreams begging for her help in freeing him from Purgatory, an adventuresome and life-changing journey begins.
While most authors base their first novel on real life experience, ¡Caramba! is completely fictional.
“Because I changed schools so many times, I never had really close friends,” said Martinez, now 35. “Natalie and Consuelo have the fictional relationship that I couldn’t have.”
Many of the characters and scenarios came from Martinez’s imagination and were developed after attending dances, Mexican rodeos and investigating artifacts that she came across in her business.
The concept of “A Tale Told in Turns of the Card” came from the Mexican game, La Loteria.
“I had these six main characters, most of them knew each other, but their most common thread was living in this small town,” said Martinez. “As I was looking at the cards, I realized that I had La Sirena (the siren) in my book, all of these women are sirens. I had El Musico (the musician). I had all of these characters. It was a perfect way to weave them together.”
The book also contains many unique additions beyond the “turns of the card” concept, including handwritten letters, shopping lists, maps of Mexico, newspaper articles, a timeline of the volcano, and my personal favorite, Lullabel’s map of where to find the man of your dreams.
Peter Mendelson, the man behind the final look of the artwork, won an American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) award for his work.
The style of the tale has been compared to that of Tom Robbins. The characters are smart, extremely intriguing, and constantly surprising.
Martinez is pleased with the success of ¡Caramba! “It’s doing very well for a first novel,” she said, “My father is very proud of me, and I’m surrounded by amazing people.”
And Martinez says she has a lot more to do. She’s happy with her success, but asks “how can one rest?” Her response was prompted by her daughter, now 15, who came home one day after school this fall and reported that she was the only one in her class to have read a book over the summer.
Beyond now being an advocate for reading, Martinez still runs her vintage clothing business, is working on a second novel and will soon begin translating ¡Caramba! into Spanish.
“I still work as hard as I did before,” said Martinez. “But I now have the satisfaction of publishing this book and the platform to make a difference.”
Martinez will be reading from Caramba! A Tale Told in Turns of the Card at Booksmart this Saturday, the 18th, at 2pm.
