The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico. A Novel

A "beautiful" (Booklist) novel about a young Puerto Rican girl discovering her power-and finding the strength to follow her heart-from the New York Times bestselling author of The Baker's Daughter "[A] touching coming-of-age debut novel [that] transcends borders and times."-Library JournalIt is 1961, and Puerto Rico is trapped in a tug-of-war between those who want to stay connected to the United States and those who are fighting for independence.
For eleven-year-old Verdita Ortiz-Santiago, this is a battle fought much closer to home. Verdita has always been safe and secure in her sleepy mountain town, far from the excitement of the capital city of San Juan or the glittering shores of the United States, where her older cousin lives. She will be a señorita soon, which, as her mother reminds her, means that she will be expected to cook and clean, go to Mass every day, choose arroz con pollo over hamburguesas, and give up her love for Elvis Presley.
And yet, as much as Verdita longs to escape this seemingly inevitable future and become a blond American bombshell, she is still a young girl who is scared by late-night stories of the chupacabra, who wishes her mother would still rub her back and sing her a lullaby, and who is both ashamed and exhilarated by her changing body. A modern-day classic about the growing pains of adolescence, The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico explores the struggle to break free from the people who have raised us, the difficulties of leaving behind one's homeland for places unknown, and the heart-wrenching choices we each face in order to become who we are meant to be.