Chronicles the lives of three generations of Dominican women--Graciela, who flees poverty in the early 1900s; her daughter Mercedes, who builds a new life in New York City; and Leila, a restless young woman coming of age in the 1990s.
When life gets difficult for Ana Rosa, a twelve-year-old would-be writer living in a small village in the Dominican Republic, she can depend on her older brother to make her feel better--until the life-changing events on her thirteenth birthday.