EVAMAR

In 2024, a 17-year-old New Jersey girl travels to Cuba to honor her abuela’s deathbed wishes.

Third-generation Cuban American Evamar adored her mysterious, folklorist grandmother so much that she overcomes her fear of visiting Cuba, with all its suffering and instability. She travels with her brother, Cedro, to spread sunflower seeds nourished by their grandmother’s ashes in her homeland. Eighteen-year-old musician Río was raised in Florida, but at age 16, after being wrongly accused of drug smuggling, he was deported alone back to his birth country of Cuba. Initially forced to do his military service—hard labor just like that endured by his “enslaved / Taíno / and Yoruba / ancestors,” talented drummer Río now suffers extreme poverty under the oppressive dictatorship. He resists misleadingly lucrative Russian army recruitment offers that involve “spreading death all over Ukraine.” When Cedro hires him and his cousin as guides, Río and Evamar meet. Written in beautifully emotive verse, the story alternates between the pair’s perspectives as they fall passionately in love, despite the looming challenges of a long-distance romance complicated by international politics. Río is by Evamar’s side as she fulfills her abuela’s final wishes, including reading her diaries and embracing her Taíno heritage and the Taíno language, awakening “the words / that have waited so patiently for so long.” Readers will root for the young couple and, after a deeply buried secret is revealed, they’ll hope for a sequel to explore its possibilities.

Captivating and heartfelt.