Cristina Henriquez
This novel is set in New Jersey, following a few immigrant families who have traveled to the US for various reasons. The apartment complex they all call home provides a community of sorts for these families who come from Honduras, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama, Mexico, etc. In fact, one of the pleasures of this novel is the telling of the different stories of each family history, showing the uniqueness that each brings to their current situation. Our main characters are Mayor and Maribel. The storytelling mechanism is to allow each character to narrate a chapter (so as a reader we get first person insight from a variety of points of view) but strangely, Maribel is never a narrator. So her character is completely developed from the third person. While the story does have some weaknesses (caricature and a weak ending) it is definitely worth the read.
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