November 2016 Selections:
The Veins of the Ocean By: Patricia Engel
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN-13: 978-0802124890
Synopsis:
Reina Castillo is the alluring young woman whose beloved brother is serving a death sentence for a crime that shocked the community, throwing a baby off a bridge—a crime for which Reina secretly blames herself. With her brother’s death, though devastated and in mourning, Reina is finally released from her prison vigil. Seeking anonymity, she moves to a sleepy town in the Florida Keys where she meets Nesto Cadena, a recently exiled Cuban awaiting with hope the arrival of the children he left behind in Havana. Through Nesto’s love of the sea and capacity for faith, Reina comes to understand her own connections to the life-giving and destructive forces of the ocean that surrounds her as well as its role in her family’s troubled history, and in their companionship, begins to find freedom from the burden of guilt she carries for her brother’s crime.
Set in the vibrant coastal and Caribbean communities of Miami, the Florida Keys, Havana, Cuba, and Cartagena, Colombia, with The Veins of the Ocean Patricia Engel delivers a profound and riveting Pan-American story of fractured lives finding solace and redemption in the beauty and power of the natural world, and in one another.
Author Bio:
Patricia Engel is the author of Vida and It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris. Her acclaimed debut, Vida, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award, New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and Paterson Fiction Award, winner of the International Latino Book Award, Florida Book Award, and Independent Publisher Book Award, and longlisted for The Story Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Additionally, Vida was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Barnes & Noble, Latina Magazine, and Los Angeles Weekly.
Patricia’s fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, A Public Space, Boston Review, Guernica, and Harvard Review, among other publications, and received awards including the Boston Review Fiction Prize, fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Key West Literary Seminar, Norman Mailer Writer’s Colony, Hedgebrook, Ucross, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, as well as a 2014 fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment of the Arts.
Author Website: http://patriciaengel.com/
Twitter: patricia_Engel
Facebook: http://facebook.com/patriciaengel
Additional Conversations with Selection:
In between: one teen, two cultures By: P.T. Rezende (Author), Celma F Luster (Translator)
Publisher: Open Vista Press
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-0988924291
Synopsis:
An American teenager travels from the United States to Brazil with his mother to visit family. He just finished high school, is getting ready for college and he resists going. The trip lasts for a month. He looks back, reflecting on his personal conflicts and struggles and the cultural disconnection with his Brazilian heritage. Through reactions to and observations of events, he sheds some light into his bicultural experience.
Bio:
P.T. Rezende
A college student and hard worker who enjoys ocean related activities – surfing being his current passion. His days of digging holes in the sand to reach China are over. He likes living in Southern California.
This short memoir was a way to express some of the difficulties of trying to fit in. Often, it is difficult to look beyond everything at the time it happens. It is in looking back that it becomes easier to understand some of the things we’ve been through.
Celma de Faria Luster
Born in Brazil, she came to the United States in her late 20’s.
She has been a librarian in Northern California for many years. She considers learning a new language a lifelong challenge – an exciting one for that matter. In her case, English is a constant learning process. There are many other aspects that make living in a foreign country a blessing and a curse. It is important to fight the odds, find balance, and accept the shortcomings.
Author Page: https://www.openvistapress.com/authors/