America Is Not the Heart

Moderation, the 'passionate and tender love story' (Kaliane Bradley), is out July 2025 - available now

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Longlisted for the Aspen Literary Prize, 2019

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, 2018

Longlisted for Elle's Big Book Award, 2018



A giant debut novel about the redemptive, restorative power of love; about trust and fear; hair and makeup; food and sex; it's about belonging and...not belonging. It's a soulful literary saga set in the early nineties of San Francisco; a coming-of-age about leaving home and, sometimes, the necessity of turning back.



How many lives can one person lead in a single lifetime?





When Hero De Vera arrives in America, disowned by her parents in the Philippines, she's already on her third. Her uncle, Pol, who has offered her a fresh start and a place to stay in the Bay Area, knows not to ask about the first and second. And his wife, Paz, has learned enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. Only their daughter Roni asks Hero why her hands seem to scream with hurt at the steering wheel of the car she drives to collect her from school, and only Rosalyn, the fierce but open-hearted beautician, has any hope of bringing Hero back from the dead.



'This book is it: one of the best debut novels (and novels, period) of recent years' Elle



'Blazingly fearless' Observer



'Radical... I was startled at how moved I was' Guardian

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Readers love America is Not the Heart



'I was swept away'



'Rich and multilayered'



'Lovely, complex, searing'



'Castillo is a magician'



'It's been a long time since I've been so profoundly touched'



Elaine Castillo was born, raised and lives in the Bay Area.



Blazingly fearless... Castillo is hugely talented



Radical... I was startled at how moved I was



Critical and compelling



The next big thing... It has drama and tragedy in spades, but it also has so much love of every kind spilling out of it pages that I closed it each night with a huge, warm smile



This book is it: one of the best debut novels (and novels, period) of recent years



Entrancing and magnificent. Don't say you were not told. Dazzling.



Epic, soaring, brilliant



Epic in its scale, sharp-as slam-poetry on the sentence level. Profound and mesmerising.



Beautifully tender, and a powerfully crafted portrayal of intimacy and the rawness of human emotion that will linger with you long after you've finished reading it.



An intimate epic about immigrant women's losses, triumphs and desires. A bold, tender debut; its characters thrum with life.



Glorious... a sharp, bracing, often hilarious family epic about a young woman tormented by the relentless ghosts of her past while in search of an American Dream that is not always available to those who seek it.



Wondrous. A nimble, vibrant, deeply moving feat, full of heart, humour and wisdom.



This is the book I didn't know I needed. This unexpected family, this history, this embrace of the sacred and the profane, this easy humour, this deeply felt human-ness, this messy, perfect love story.



A sprawling tale of three generations of Filipino women, this wonderful book encompasses everything from political upheaval to familial understanding.



Elaine Castillo's full-throated debut, America is Not the Heart is quite simply one of the best first novels I've ever read.



If peaches were the most tender fruit of 2017 thanks to Call Me By Your Name, this year prepare to have your heart melted by a persimmon.



In this complex, nuanced novel, Castillo delves into a reality too often ignored by mainstream America, uncovering universal emotional truths along the way.



Castillo emerges as one of 2018's boldest new voices with this debut.



There is so much to love about this book - its depiction of class, society, the search for belonging and how it feels to be a woman and an immigrant, a depiction all the more poignant in the current climate



A gorgeous and gratifyingly huge novel about home and finding a home, replete with food and music and spiky tenderness.



Searing... a beautiful book... [Castillo] writes brilliantly about desire and sex and the various histories and insecurities that influence relationships. It's an incredible example of a book that centers a queer relationship that is not always easy or simple, but is not in any way defined by queer suffering.



America is Not the Heart has a special place in my heart... While politics and revolution form the background of the novel, the foreground is all about the power, pleasure and peril of kinship and romance, set in a beautifully, intimately drawn portrait of the Filipino American community.