'She has to get to Daisy immediately. And here is a monster in her path.'
It is a Tuesday evening in June when Ruth receives the phone call that all parents dread. Her daughter Daisy has been hit by a car during a deadly storm in Puerto Rico.
How Ruth wishes she could tell Daisy she loves her. That she is sorry her own muddy feelings about Daisy's move to San Juan caused them to fight. What a waste of precious breath.
Instinctively, it's her mother, Rafaela, Ruth wants to turn to. Rafaela whose own memories of growing up in Puerto Rico are becoming ever more vivid, as have her sudden flashes of forgetfulness.
Can Rafaela close the gap between her daughter and granddaughter?
Can she bring them home, before it's too late?
From the author of the runaway international bestseller AMERICAN DIRT comes the story of a Puerto Rican-American family fractured along lines of identity and belonging. Will they weather the storm?
What do you think of when you think of home?
For Ruth, it's the house she has lovingly rebuilt around her family, a place of taste and refinement, now the focus of a flourishing online career. It's a shame her children don't always appreciate her work as much as her newfound followers, but there's always a new renovation to lose herself in.
For Ruth's daughter Daisy, the answer's not so simple. For while Puerto Rico's San Juan - scene of endless teenage summers, and now the inspiration for her vintage clothing start-up - has her heart, her refusal to return to the mainland and embark on a future is driving a wedge between herself and her mother.
Rafaela understands her granddaughter Daisy's attachment to the island, and wants to support her. But as each passing day brings her own youthful memories more vividly to the surface, she realises she too has choices to make. How can she explain all this to Ruth?
When Ruth receives the phone call all parents dread, during a tropical storm on the island the family must come to terms with how far they have drifted apart. Can they find their way back to one another?
