Carolyn C

In Capó Crucet's second major work anchored in Floridian working class Cuban culture, gutsy Lizet escapes unprepared from her shattered family to a top tier college. Her choice to leave entrenched cultural structures breaks essential bonds of family and identity. The text erupts with emotional behaviors and fierce language blamed on this "betrayal," but allowing the main characters space to become strangers to each other while acting out individual needs.

The author chooses an intensive focus on scenes, resulting in detailed characterization but a slow narrative pace. Each scene is lit by contrast of personalities, providing highly pleasing realism, wackiness, chaos, humor, sympathy and warmth. Use of an outer frame structure by which an older Lizet updates and occasionally intrudes into the main text raises the literary value, as do the symbolic Florida culverts and laboratory notebooks that permit discarding errors and moving forward, plus juxtaposition of the family's crisis with the historic but camouflaged 1999 Elián González custody battle. The novel is recommended for reading groups who can tolerate fuming language and underage sex, senior high and freshman college classes – with guidance, Chick Lit fans, and anyone curious how a current presidential candidate so easily bisects older and younger Cuban voters.