Author | Poet | Story teller
Celina Arredondo
Celina Arredondo (pen name CLA Reyna) lives in Southern California with her husband Richard and her min-pin-mix dog Winnie. She is a retired elementary school teacher having taught for 35 years, and now spends some of her free time writing novels and poetry. Her novels often contain characters and situation based on real people and actual events. Celina’s poetry is personal, reflective, and raw, and for her, cathartic.
Her motto is “Create something new every day.” Celina has self-published three novels and is currently working on three books of poetry. Other hobbies include collecting vintage copies of children’s books, crossword puzzles, gardening, Jazzercising, studying the Bible, and cooking and home decorating with her two adult daughters.
She loves to read and sip wine. Her favorite author is Isabelle Allende (and her favorite wine is a robust merlot).
Books
That The Water Rises
Salaminda is born on the Papago Indian Reservation in Arizona in 1932. Presbyterian missionaries force her and her brothers to leave their desert home for a boarding school in Tucson, a practice dating back to the 1800s.
Salaminda faces indoctrination into mainstream America by reformers intent upon remaking her identity. Nevertheless, Salaminda is curious about The Other, the Papago name for white Americans, and questions whether she can live with one foot in each world.
When tragedy strikes, Salaminda is thrust into situations that will make her choose where her loyalties lie and whether she can enable two cultures to join to fight injustice.
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From Barrio to Battle and Back: The Story of Reechie Boy
Richard grows up in Redlands, California in the 1950s and 1960s. The youngest of four brothers, Richard lives with his parents in the Northside of town, the “poorside,” comprised of working class Mexican American families who struggle economically and socially. Despite his poverty, Richard lives optimistically, from his boyhood of adventure-seeking and mischief to his teen years working in the citrus industry to his early adulthood when he is drafted into the army and endures the challenges of boot camp and the atrocities of combat in the Vietnam War.
This biography is filled with the humorous, heartfelt, and tragic events of Richard’s life that illustrate his zest for life, his commitment to his family, and his desire, in war, to stay alive to reunite with his father.
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In the Realm of Spirits
Set in Los Angeles in the 1940’s, In the Realm of Spirits is about a family with secrets, hidden dreams, and unreconciled post traumatic events that shape personalities and bring tragedy to an otherwise typical family.
But one thing is not typical. Viola, a determined, confident woman who moves to Los Angeles from Arizona, can see the future. She speaks to spirits and can touch an object and receive impressions from it.
She also had a connection to an evil force that does her bidding.
Viola struggles to understand her spiritual gifts and how to use them to protect her family. She also battles to defeat a dark entity attempting to lure her into its clutches.
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Intertwined
Nadia and Miriam Rodríguez are sisters living in Monterrey, Mexico. In their 20’s, the girls resemble each other so distinctly that they are mistaken for twins. Though they come from a wealthy family, Nadia and Miriam live on their own in a modest apartment, determined to live lives on their own terms.
Then Nadia is kidnapped by the Mexican cartel. And Miriam, as devoted to Nadia as Nadia is to her, enlists the help of friends to rescue Nadia from captivity, finding out, in the process, about a life-changing secret that Nadia has been concealing.
As they deal with adversity, Nadia and Miriam remain committed to each other’s safety. Their sisterly love, though challenged, grows stronger amid the crisis until the unlikely participants in the plot are revealed.
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