Puerto Rico, a US territory since 1898, is at the heart and soul of this novel. The island has limited representation in Washington and various natural disasters have added to its financial woes. In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the island. The humanitarian crisis and the US’s shocking failure to provide adequate relief for its citizens lie at the heart of this damning indictment of a world where a colonialist past is damning in the present, and the value of having fine things is prized more highly than compassion.
The nuclear family at the center of this story is brilliantly diverse. Two Nuyorican siblings, Olga and her brother Prieto, were raised by their grandmother and they are protective of each other and burdened by their parents’ mistakes. They continue to seek the approval of their activist mother, who abandoned Olga when she was 12 (and Prieto not much older), to fight for self-determination for Puerto Rico. Not long after, their father died of AIDS, a junkie traumatised by the Vietnam war and unwilling to match his wife’s militancy. Olga has become a successful wedding planner, and Prieto a congressman, come up against a corrupt and hostile system in their pursuit of the American dream. Olga yearns to be the a cultural icon, but becomes disillusioned by the relentless drive to accumulate wealth and fame. Prieto enters politics determined to protect his Brooklyn neighbourhood and its minority community but, politically naive, Prieto finds himself blackmailed by property developers intent on gentrifying the area.
This is a novel that is well constructed, and story well told and not soon forgotten, with a message well worth thinking about and supporting. It is on the one hand quite simple, but on the other, utterly complex.
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