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Ambitious high school senior Efrain Rodriguez dreams of escaping the South Bronx for an Ivy League college like Harvard or Yale. But how is his family going to afford to pay for a prestigious university when Moms has to work insane hours to put food on the table as it is? And Efrain wouldn’t dare ask that good-for-nothing father of his who has traded his family in for younger models. Left with few options, Efrain chooses to do something he never thought he would. He embarks on a double life—honor student by day, drug peddler at night—convinced that by temporarily capitulating to society’s negative expectations of a boy like him, he can eventually defy them.
Sofia Quintero makes a stunning debut writing for young adults with this gritty, complex, and real exploration of the life of an urban teen whose attempt to leave one world behind for a better one could cost him everything.
"Starred Review. Relevant SAT vocabulary words begin each chapter, and seamlessly interwoven subplots ... make the story that much more emotionally resonant. Ages 12–up." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Mostly, though, it is Quintero’s effortless grasp of teen slang that gives her first-person story its heart." - Booklist
This information about Efrain's Secret was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sofia Quintero is a writer, an activist, an educator, a speaker, and a comedienne. She has written several hip hop novels under the pen name Black Artemis and also writes 'chica lit' under her real name. This self-proclaimed 'Ivy League homegirl' graduated from Columbia University and lives in the Bronx.
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