NATIONAL BESTSELLER - An epic novel of love, discovery, and adventure by the author of the award-winning, bestselling memoir When I Was Puerto Rican. - "Santiago's storytelling is thrilling.... A triumph." --The Washington Post
As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de León. And in handsome twin brothers Ramón and Inocente--both in love with Ana--she finds a way to get there. She marries Ramón, and in 1844, just eighteen, she travels across the ocean to a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited on the island.
Ana faces unrelenting heat, disease and isolation, and the dangers of the untamed countryside even as she relishes the challenge of running Hacienda los Gemelos. But when the Civil War breaks out in the United States, Ana finds her livelihood, and perhaps even her life, threatened by the very people on whose backs her wealth has been built: the hacienda's slaves, whose richly drawn stories unfold alongside her own. And when at last Ana falls for a man who may be her destiny--a once-forbidden love--she will sacrifice nearly everything to keep hold of the land that has become her true home.
This is a sensual, riveting tale, set in a place where human passions and cruelties collide: thrilling history that has never before been brought so vividly and unforgettably to life.
Author: Esmeralda Santiago
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 07/10/2012
Pages: 432
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 8.01h x 5.13w x 0.88d
ISBN: 9780307388599
Review Citation(s): New York Times Book Review 08/05/2012 pg. 28
About the AuthorESMERALDA SANTIAGO is the author of the memoirs
When I Was Puerto Rican, Almost a Woman, which she adapted into a Peabody Award-winning film for PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, and
The Turkish Lover; the novel
América's Dream; and a children's book,
A Doll for Navidades. Her work has appeared in
The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and
House & Garden, among other publications, and on NPR's
All Things Considered and
Morning Edition. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she lives in New York.