The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez

The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez is a middle grade fantasy novel by Adrianna Cuevas and was published in 2020 by Farrar Straus Giroux. Cuevas’s debut novel follows a 12-year-old Cuban American boy named Nestor who uses his extraordinary gift of talking to animals to save his new home of New Haven, Texas, from the clutches of a malevolent tule vieja. Through Nestor’s coming-of-age journey, Cuevas imbues the story with her own Cuban American heritage, as the novel explores the challenging realities of growing up in a military family, the search for one’s place in the world, and the importance of cultural heritage and family legacy.

The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez was named one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2020 and was a 2021 Pura Belpré Honor Book.

This guide refers to the 2021 First Square Fish e-book edition.

Content Warning: This book contains themes of displacement and challenges of military family life, including references to military deployment in conflict zones, military weapons, and fatality.

Plot Summary

Sixth grader Nestor Lopez is all too used to moving around. As the son of Sergeant First Class Raúl Lopez, an explosive ordnance disposal specialist in the US Army, Nestor has already lived in five places—Georgia, Colorado, Washington, Kentucky, and Texas.