A moving middle-grade mystery about a boy dealing with long-repressed memories of his father as he learns about his Mexican and Haitian heritage while spying on a mysterious stranger during the first weeks of COVID lockdown.

Tombolo Books welcomes FL author Phillippe Diederich to the bookstore to celebrate his middle grade novel Lalo Lespérance Never Forgot! Diederich will be in conversation with St. Petersburg's Poet Laureate, Gloria Muñoz!

Phillippe Diederich is a freelance photographer and writer. He is the son of Haitian exiles, and he grew up in Mexico City. He is a recipient of the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship and the author of two previous novels, including the acclaimed novel Playing for the Devil’s Fire, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. He lives in Florida.

Gloria Muñoz is a Colombian American writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. She is the author of Your Biome Has Found You and Danzirly (University of Arizona Press, 2021), which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. Her other honors include an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, Hedgebrook Fellowship, being a Macondista, Highlights Foundation’s Diverse Verse Fellowship, Lumina’s Multilingual Writing Award, a Las Musas Mentorship, St. Pete Arts Alliance's Muse Award, Creative Pinellas' Artist Grant, and attending the Tin House YA writers workshop. Through Moonlit Música, the company she cofounded, Muñoz writes and composes music for bilingual children’s programming in audio, film, and curriculum. She is proud to be St. Pete's first Latina poet laureate.