Synopses & Reviews
From the prizewinning author of Come Together, Fall Apart comes a mesmerizingly beautiful first novel about family, home, loss, and forgiveness that more than fulfills the promise of her earlier work. Miraflores has never known her father, and until now, shes never thought that he wanted to know her. Shes long been aware that her mother had an affair with him while she was stationed with her then husband in Panama, and shes always assumed that her pregnant mother came back to the United States alone with his consent. But when Miraflores returns to the Chicago suburb where she grew up, to care for her mother at a time of illness, she discovers that her mother and father had a greater love than she ever thought possible, and that her father had wanted her more than she could have ever imagined.
In secret, Miraflores plots a trip to Panama, in search of the man whose love she hopes can heal her motherand whose presence she believes can help her find the pieces of her own identity that she thought were irretrievably lost. What she finds is unexpected, exhilarating, and holds the power to change the course of her life completely.
In gorgeous, shimmering prose, Cristina Henríquez delivers a triumphant and heartbreaking first novel: the story of a young woman reconciling an existence between two cultures and confronting a life of hardship with an endless capacity to learn, love, and forgive.
Synopsis
Now in paperback, the "beautiful" (Chicago Sun-Times) novel from the prizewinning author of Come Together, Fall Apart.
Miraflores never knew her father, and never thought he wanted to know her. But when she returns to the Chicago suburb where she grew up to care for her ailing mother, she discovers that her mother and father were greatly in love, and that her father had wanted a daughter more than she could have imagined. Now, Miraflores secretly plots a trip to Panama, in search of the man she hopes can heal her mother-and who can help her find the pieces of her own identity. What she finds is unexpected, exhilarating, and holds the power to change the course of her life.
About the Author
Cristina Henríquez is the author of
Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories and the forthcoming novel
The World In Half. Her stories have been published in
The New Yorker,
Glimmer Train,
Ploughshares,
TriQuarterly, and
AGNI, and her non-fiction has appeared in
The New Yorker,
The Oxford American, and
Preservation. She was featured in
Virginia Quarterly Review as one of "Fiction's New Luminaries," and is a recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award, a grant started by Sandra Cisneros in honor of her father.
She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives with her husband in Chicago.