Esmeralda Santiago’s story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby’s soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity.
Young Adult (ages 14-18)
Material appropriate for young adults
Call Me Maria
Fifteen-year-old Mara leaves her mother and their Puerto Rican home to live in the barrio of New York with her father, feeling torn between the two cultures in which she has been raised.
Old Dog
Perro Viejo was taken away from his mother at birth and has known no other life than that of servitude on a sugar plantation. His name, which means “Old Dog,” was given to him by the plantation master because, like the bloodhounds that chased fugitive slaves, Perro Viejo is always searching for the scent of his long lost mother. The only thing that keeps him alive is the memory of Asunción, a beautiful girl he once met while washing his master’s horses at a river. Never to see her again, he closes his heart to all forms of love. Nearing the end of his life, Perro Viejo meets Beira, an old slave who is avoided by the other slaves because they think she is a witch. She warms Perro Viejo’s heart, and together they hatch a plan to escape from slavery. Young readers join Perro Viejo as he finally learns what it is to love — and to feel free.
A Rose for the Anzac Boys
The story starts in 1915. Midge Macpherson is at school in England, having been sent there from New Zealand after her father’s death. Her brothers are both serving in the war; her younger brother was last heard of at the Gallipoli campaign earlier that year. Her cousins are serving in the British army. Keen to ‘do their bit’ for the war effort, Midge and her school friends, Ethel and Anne, start up a canteen behind the front in France. Anne, daughter of English aristocracy, can’t wait to escape her inevitable future of being married off to someone ‘suitable’, and Ethel, a Yorkshire lass, six foot tall and built like a rugby player, isn’t exactly debutante material.
As the war goes on, the girls start to see the consequences of the ‘noble cause’ they’re supporting, graphically illustrated by letters from Midge’s brother Dougie, her aunt Lallie (who is running a hospital ward in Alexandria), and a couple of Australians also serving on the front, Gordon Marks and Harry Harrison. Midge, resourceful for her years, is ‘borrowed’ by the ambulance service, thus witnessing at close hand the carnage of the battlefields, and hearing the stories of those who come back. She sings songs to the dying, learns to tolerate hit-and-miss anaesthesia and twelve-hour shifts, and meets some remarkable people. She accepts a birthday gift of a drawing, done by a blinded soldier, of a vase of roses. And, on her return to New Zealand, discovers that her world has changed, and she must seek out her future in Australia.
A Proper Place
The fourth in the very successful series about Kevin (a Catholic) and Sadie (a Protestant) who meet (The Twelfth Day of July), grow up and fall in love (Across the Barricades) and leave Belfast to marry and find some peace (Into Exile). A Proper Place finds them still in Liverpool, with a two-room flat and baby Brendan, and coping with Kevin’s sullen seventeen-year-old brother, Gerald;’ but a job and a tied cottage on a Cheshire farm offer a new direction
The Twelfth Day of July
Sadie is Protestant, Kevin is Catholic – and on the tense streets of Belfast their lives collide. It starts with a dare – kids fooling around – but soon becomes something dangerous. Getting to know Sadie Jackson will change Kevin’s life forever. But will the world around them change too?
Hostages to Fortune
When the death of Kevin’s employer confronts him and his wife Sadie with the sudden loss of both job and home, an uncertain future looms up before them. Sequel to “A Proper Place.”
Cleopatra’s Moon
“The Luxe” meets the ancient world in the extraordinary story of Cleopatra’s daughter. Selene has grown up in a palace on the Nile with her parents, Cleopatra and Mark Antony–the most brilliant, powerful rulers on earth. But the jealous Roman Emperor Octavianus wants Egypt for himself. When war finally comes, Selene faces the loss of all she’s ever loved. Forced to build a new life in Octavianus’s household in Rome, she finds herself torn between two young men and two possible destinies–until she reaches out to claim her own.
Abe In Arms
Portraying the pressures of teens to live a normal life while facing mental illness, this suspenseful young adult novel follows the journey of success-bound Abe, who struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A senior in high school, with a loving and wealthy adoptive family, Abe is on track for a big scholarship and an open future. Suddenly, horrific flashbacks rip him back to war-torn Africa, where five years previously he lost his mother, sister, friends, and almost his own life to torturous violence. During therapy, he uncovers even darker moments from his past that make him question how he survived. This action-filled thriller will open the eyes and hearts of teenagers to the lives of young people who have been exposed to profound violence around the world.
Secret Heart
Living with his mother in a small village on the edge of the suburbs, shy, often inarticulate, Joe Maloney frequently dreams of a beautiful, elusive tiger whose significance begins to be clear after he befriends a young trapeze artist who comes to town with a shabby traveling circus.