Synopses & Reviews
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Today.com * Time * Electric Literature * Seattle Times * Telemundo * Washington Post * HipLatina * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * AARP * Shondaland * New York Times
From the bestselling, National Book Award-winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake — a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led — her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.
But Flor isn't the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.
Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces — one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.
Review
"Elizabeth Acevedo's Family Lore is a sweeping multi-generational story of a family of women whose special powers have helped them overcome personal, familial, and historical challenges that both bond them together and at times threaten to pull them apart but ultimately navigate them into the full abrazos of love. Acevedo is in full command of her special powers as a storyteller of compassionate, capacious and lyrical imagination. Make room on your shelves, readers, for this strong new voice with an old soul and a deep well of understanding of who we wonderfully are for the brief time we are beings." Julia Alvarez, author of Afterlife and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Review
"Acevedo is brilliant at portraying the women's love and loyalty for one another. The author's fans will eat this up." Publishers Weekly
Review
"A juicy novel of sisterhood, resilience, and magic….Acevedo's novel starring a spunky narrator will enchant both fans and new readers." Booklist
About the Author
Elizabeth Acevedo is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie medal, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High — which was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal — and Clap When You Land, which was a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor book and a Kirkus finalist. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo has been a fellow of Cave Canem, Cantomundo, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer's Workshops. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and resides in Washington, DC with her loves.