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Algonquin Books
May 2012
On Sale: April 24, 2012
304 pages ISBN: 1616201304 EAN: 9781616201302 Kindle: B0074QGDBS Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Julia Alvarez has been called βa one-woman cultural collisionβ by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and that has never been truer than in this story about three of her most personal relationshipsβwith her parents, with her husband, and with a young Haitian boy known as Piti. A teenager when Julia and her husband, Bill, first met him in 2001, Piti crossed the border into the Dominican Republic to find work. Julia, impressed by his courage, charmed by his smile, has over the years come to think of him as a son, even promising to be at his wedding someday. When Piti calls in 2009, Juliaβs promise is tested. To Alvarez, much admired for her ability to lead readers deep inside her native Dominican culture, βHaiti is like a sister Iβve never gotten to know.β And so we follow her across the border into what was once the richest of all the French colonies and now teeters on the edge of the abyssβfirst for the celebration of a wedding and a year later to find Pitiβs loved ones in the devastation of the earthquake. As in all of Alvarezβs books, a strong message is packed inside an intimate, beguiling story, this time about the nature of poverty and of wealth, of human love and of human frailty, of history and of the way we live now.
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Sunday - May 6, 2012
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