Angie Cruz

With her first novel, Angie Cruz established herself as a dazzling new voice in Latin-American fiction. Now, with humor, passion, and intensity, she reveals the proud members of the Colón family and the dreams, love, and heartbreak that bind them to their past and the future.

Esperanza did not risk her life fleeing the Dominican Republic to live in a tenement in Washington Heights. No, she left for the glittering dream she saw on television: JR, Bobby Ewing, and the crystal chandeliers of Dallas. But years later, she is still stuck in a cramped apartment with her husband, Santo, and their two children, Bobby and Dallas. She works as a home aide and, at night, stuffs unopened bills from the credit card company in her lingerie drawer where Santo won't find them when he returns from driving his livery cab. Despite their best efforts, they cannot seem to change their present circumstances.

But when Santo's mother dies, back in Los Llanos, and his father, Don Chan, comes to Nueva York to live out his twilight years in the Colóns' small apartment, nothing will ever be the same. Santo had so much promise before he fell for that maldita woman, thinks Don Chan, especially when he is left alone with his memories of the revolution they once fought together against Trujillo's cruel regime, the promise of who Santo might have been, had he not fallen under Esperanza's spell. From the moment Don Chan arrives, the tension in the Colón household is palpable.

Flashing between past and present, Let It Rain Coffee is a sweeping novel about love, loss, family, and the elusive nature of memory and desire, set amid the crosscurrents of the history and culture that shape our past and govern our future.

At eighteen, Soledad couldn't get away fast enough from her contentious family with their endless tragedies and petty fights. Two years later, she's an art student at Cooper Union with a gallery job and a hip East Village walk-up. But when Tía Gorda calls with the news that Soledad's mother has lapsed into an emotional coma, she insists that Soledad's return is the only cure. Fighting the memories of open hydrants, leering men, and slick-skinned teen girls with raunchy mouths and snapping gum, Soledad moves home to West 164th Street. As she tries to tame her cousin Flaca's raucous behavior and to resist falling for Richie -- a soulful, intense man from the neighborhood -- she also faces the greatest challenge of her life: confronting the ghosts from her mother's past and salvaging their damaged relationship.

Evocative and wise, Soledad is a wondrous story of culture and chaos, family and integrity, myth and mysticism, from a Latina literary light.

En Washington Heights, el barrio dominicano de Nueva York, las calles huelen a lima y a cilantro, el merengue suena en todas las esquinas y en verano los jóvenes destapan las bocas de incendios para refrescarse. Ahi nació Soledad, que a sus dieciocho anos logro escapar de la inercia de una vida sin horizontes e inicio sus estudios de Bellas Artes en la prestigiosa Cooper Union. Lleva ya dos anos compartiendo un minúsculo estudio en el East Village y trabaja en una galería. Pero una mañana recibe la llamada desesperada de su tía Gorda. Olivia, su madre, ha caído en una especie de coma emocional: se niega a hablar y se pasa el dia durmiendo. Para que su madre se cure debe regresar a casa.

Al instalare de nuevo en el barrio, Soledad descubre que los fantasmas del pasado vuelven a acecharla, que todo lo que creía haber dejado atrás sigue en el mismo sitio. Sus abuelos, sus tíos, su prima Flaca, Richie, el vecino del que no quiere enamorarse...

Soledad inicia un viaje al pasado para rescatar a su madre del pozo de silencio y remordimientos en el que esta sumida, un viaje que acabara llevándola al país de sus origínese, la Republica Dominicana. Divertida, emocionante, rica en matices, mágica, Soledad es una novela sobre la emigración, sobre el dolor de la ausencia, sobre el desgarro interior de las segundas generaciones, que, nacidas en el país acogida, viven a caballo de dos mundos no siempre reconciliables.