Make Your Home Among Strangers
By Jennine Capo Crucet
St. Martin’s Press
Hard Cover, 388 Pages
www.stmartins.com
This tale is about a young girl who is the first in her family to graduate high school and leave her impoverished community of immigrants to attend college and how she must struggle to fit into her new life and mourn the one she left behind.
Lizet copes with her identity as a Cuban once she is immersed in her new surroundings in New York at the privileged Rawlings College, where she is viewed as a token student of ethnic background. She is no longer that smart girl who stands out in her hometown, but she discovers she is in real academic trouble in threat of losing her student grants, which is the only way she can stay in school.
A crisis of global proportion further shines the spotlight on her and her family after a Cuban boy washes up on the Miami shores near her home.
Lizet also grapples with her obligations to help her family at home and her commitment to her sister and mother almost cause her to lose out on opportunities that will eventually lead her to a career beyond her imagination.
It’s a second novel for this young author and it is entertaining with a pause for thought as it brings you back to your awkward teen years of self-discovery.
