Pa'l Otro Lado, a prequel to Mariguano, spans five generations of violence and tragedy in the Cortina family while narrating their forced migration to the United States from Northern Mexico. It is the tale of every working-class family who has come to realize that ?you just can't win.? Hunger and poverty drive the characters in this novel to abandon all hopes of attaining the American Dream and to resign themselves simply to survive. P'al Otro Lado is full of the baddest hombres and the nastiest women we all know, love, and call family.

Juan Ochoa is the author of Mariguano, a novel set in the drug trafficking world of the Texas/Mexico border circa 1980s. His short stories and essays appear in numerous journals. He teaches writing at South Texas College in McAllen. Ochoa is a licensed Mexican lawyer with an MFA in creative writing. He is currently writing the final volume in the trilogy El Penal.