Julia Alvarez has been called quota one-woman cultural collisionquot by theLos Angeles Times Book Review, and that has never been truer than in this story about three of her most personal relationships-with her parents, with her husband, and with a young Haitian boy known as Piti. A teenager when Julia and her husband, Bill, first met him in , Piti crossed the border into the Dominican Republic to find work. Julia, impressed by his courage, charmed by his smile, has over the years come to think of him as a son, even promising to be at his wedding someday. When Piti calls in , Julias promise is tested.To Alvarez, much admired for her ability to lead readers deep inside her native Dominican culture, quotHaiti is like a sister Ive never gotten to know.quot And so we follow her across the border into what was once the richest of all the French colonies and now teeters on the edge of the abyss-first for the celebration of a wedding and a year later to find Pitis loved ones in the devastation of the earthquake.
