<div><p>It's crazy! Seventeen-year-old Masi Burciaga hauls bricks to help build a giant pyramid in her neighborhood park. Her barrio is becoming more of a ghost town each day since the lard company moved away. Even her school closed down. Her family's bakery and the other surviving businesses may soon follow. As a last resort, the neighborhood grown-ups enlist all the remaining able-bodied boys and girls to erect a giant pyramid in the middle of their park in hopes of luring tourists. Maybe their neighbors will come back. But something's not right about the secretive entrepreneur behind this pyramid scheme. Why is he giving so much money? Is it just for free labor? And then there's his son. The one with the softest of lips. <i>Pig Park</i> is a contemporary Faustian tale that forces us to look at the desperate lengths people will go to in the name of community—and maybe love.</P><p><b>Claudia Guadalupe Martinez</b>, author of the award-winning <i>The Smell of Old Lady Perfume</i>, has long been distressed about how the global economy is displacing workers and families. Claudia grew up in a tight family in Segundo Barrio in El Paso, Texas. She learned that letters form words from reading the Spanish subtitles of old westerns for her father. At age six, she already knew she wanted to create stories. Her father, who passed away when she was eleven, encouraged her to dream big and write many books. Claudia, her husband, and their daughter Penny live in Chicago, Illinois.</DIV>