![]() ![]() ![]() Of course, by then she was convinced that I could pull it off.This, too, I’ve learned as a teacher and mentor of young writers when they ask me, “Can such and such be done. I mentioned it to my editor as “proof” that it could be done. It turned out to be one of my favorite novels. It just so happened that as I was working on Finding Miracles, I read Ann Patchett’s wonderful novel Bel Canto, which takes place in an unspecified Latin American country. Most times I listen to her (and she is usually right!), but this time, I held fast to my original notion. A dark period in our American history that we have still not fully faced.What was hard was inventing a geography and culture that could be any number of Latin American countries but none specifically!By the way, at first my editor felt it would not work to leave Milly’s birth country unnamed. (“Oh, that only happened in Guatemala or Chile or El Salvador.”) This was mass genocide, not over in Nazi Germany or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but right here in our American hemisphere, with dictators and regimes often put in place and supported by our very own United States. By not specifying the country, I thought I would make it harder for readers to dismiss how pervasive this situation was. Many children were left orphans or lost their childhood altogether. People who protested, many of them young students, were rounded up, tortured,killed. (In the late 1970s, for example,only three countries in Latin America had freely elected governments.) Thousands upon thousands of people lost their lives, and the verb form “to be disappeared” entered our vocabulary. My point was to underscore the fact that throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Latin America was rife with dictatorships, police states, horrible repressive regimes. I really did not want to specify Milly’s birth country. In Finding Miracles, though, you choose to leave Milly’s birth country unnamed. Most of your previous novels deal with immigrants from or residents of the Dominican Republic. “This is a deeply moving, but also pleasantly humorous, coming-of-age story with thoughtful infusions about human rights issues.” - SLJ ![]() “Written with immediacy and charm, there is accessibility to the very American Milly’s attitudes and ideas that will help readers accompany her on her journey of discovery and growth.” - Kirkus Reviews “Complex multicultural characters and skillful depiction of Latino culture raise this readable novel, which is a school story, a family story, and a love story, to far above average.” - VOYA As their relationship grows, Milly decides to undertake a courageous journey to her homeland and, along the way, discovers the story of her birth is intertwined with the story of a country recovering from a brutal past.īeautifully written by renowned author Julia Alvarez, Finding Miracles examines the emotional complexity of familial relationships and the miracles of everyday life. His exotic accent, strange fashion sense, and intense interest in Milly force her to confront her identity as an adopted child from Pablo’s native country. ![]() Milly Kaufman is an ordinary American teenager living in Vermont-and then she meets Pablo, a new student at her high school. A new paperback edition of Julia Alvarez’s beloved story about family, identity, and first love. ![]()
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