All of Us With Wings

All of Us With Wings is a remarkable, refreshing, dangerous book filled with beautiful language. Michelle Ruiz Keil brings the supernatural, the world of art and music, themes of abuse and agency, and characters so real, my heart broke for more than one of them. This was such a satisfying read, I didn’t want it to end, yet it ended where it should. I want more from this author. Recommended By Doug C., Powells.com

Michelle Ruiz Keil’s YA fantasy debut about love, found family, and healing is an ode to post-punk San Francisco through the eyes of a Mexican-American girl.

Seventeen-year-old Xochi is alone in San Francisco, running from her painful past: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her. Then one day, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old who lives with her rockstar family in one of the city’s storybook Victorians. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas’s live-in governess and quickly finds her place in the girl’s tight-knit household, which operates on a free-love philosophy and easy warmth despite the band’s growing fame.

But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas perform a riot-grrrl ritual in good fun, accidentally summoning a pair of ancient beings bound to avenge the wrongs of Xochi’s past. She would do anything to preserve her new life, but with the creatures determined to exact vengeance on those who’ve hurt her, no one is safe — not the family Xochi’s chosen, nor the one she left behind.

"Keil's ambitious debut is jam-packed with twists and depth and froth and function . . . [this is] a book about embracing everything — people, lifestyles, beliefs, experiences — and, in so doing, finding your own distinct power." The New York Times Book Review

“Michelle Ruiz Keil creates a vivid and original novel full of music, rage, and characters that sing with purpose. Keil is a new voice to keep an eye on.” Zoraida Córdova, award-winning author of Labyrinth Lost

“A spellbinding tale about finding magic in the mundane and hope in the unknown. Filled with dizzying danger and electrifying music, All of Us with Wings left me breathless.” Ruth Ozeki, Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author of A Tale for the Time Being

Michelle Ruiz Keil is a Latinx novelist and playwright. She teaches writing and curates All Kinds of Fur: A Fairytale Reading Series and Salon in Portland, Oregon. She has been a fellow at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and Lit Camp and is a member of Las Musas, a collective of Latinx kidlit authors. Her published short fiction can be found on Cosmonauts Avenue and in the forthcoming anthology Color outside the Lines. All of Us with Wings is her first novel.