Description: "Amâerica Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, cleaning up after wealthy foreigners who don't look her in the eye. Her alcoholic mother resents her; her married boyfriend, Correa, beats her; and their fourteen-year-old daughter thinks life would be better anywhere but with Amâerica. So when Amâerica is offered the chance to work as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester, New York, she takes it as a sign to finally make the escape she's been longing for."--
Brief description:
Esmeralda Santiago is the author of three groundbreaking memoirs: When I was Puerto Rican, Almost a Woman (which she adapted into a Peabody Award-winning movie for PBS Masterpiece), and The Turkish Lover. Her fiction includes the novels América's Dream (also made into a film) and Conquistadora, and a children's book, A Doll for Navidades. Esmeralda is passionate about the artistic development of young people and has traveled the world as a public speaker encouraging literacy, memoir writing, and storytelling. Her books have been translated into fifteen languages.
Review Quotes:
"Santiago has with this novel firmly established herself as one of the most powerful new voices in American fiction." - Boston Globe
"Thrilling and page-turning. The fabulous journey of America Gonzalez...is laid out masterfully." - Chicago Tribune
"Lyrical [and] haunting, América's liberating epiphany will have readers . . . on their feet and cheering." - Washington Post
"[Santiago] establishes herself as a strong and irresistible new voice in fiction...this novel is involving and immediate, truthful and tender." - Publishers Weekly