From the award-winning, best-selling author of When I Was Puerto
Rican, a powerful novel of family, race, faith, sex, and disaster that
moves between Puerto Rico and the Bronx, revealing the lives and loves
of five women and the secret that binds them together
They refer to themselves as "las Madres," a close-knit group of women
who, with their daughters, have created a family based on friendship and
blood ties.Their story begins in Puerto Rico in 1975 when
fifteen-year-old Luz, the tallest girl in her dance academy and the only
Black one in a sea of petite, light-skinned, delicate swans, is
seriously injured in a car accident. Tragically, her brilliant,
multilingual scientist parents are both killed in the crash. Now
orphaned, Luz navigates the pressures of adolescence and copes with the
aftershock of a brain injury, when two new friends enter her life, Ada
and Shirley. Luz's days are consumed with aches and pains, and her
memory of the accident is wiped clean, but she suffers spells that send
her mind to times and places she can't share with others.
In 2017, in the Bronx, Luz's adult daughter, Marysol, wishes she better
understood her. But how can she when her mother barely remembers her own
life? To help, Ada and Shirley's daughter, Graciela, suggests a vacation
in Puerto Rico for the extended group, as an opportunity for Luz to
unearth long-buried memories and for Marysol to learn more about her
mother's early life. But despite all their careful planning, two
hurricanes, back-to-back, disrupt their homecoming, and a secret is
revealed that blows their lives wide open. In a voice that sings with
warmth, humor, friendship, and pride, celebrated author Esmeralda
Santiago unspools a story of women's sexuality, shame, disability, and
love within a community rocked by disaster.
