Olga Dies Dreaming
Author(s): Xochitl Gonzalez
General | JANUARY 2022 NEW RELEASES
It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro 'Prieto' Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying, Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's power brokers.
Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can't seem to find her own . . . until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.
Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream - all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.
Product Information
This book is gorgeous, forceful, and hopeful. Olga and her brother, Prieto are grown adults with their own careers and lives based in Brooklyn, New York. They were raised mostly by their grandmother and haven't seen their mother in 27 years.
The events of Olga Dies Dreaming take place mostly in New York around the time of the worst storm in Puerto Rico's history- Hurricane Maria. Weathering storms is a central theme (literal and metaphorical ones). It’s refreshing to read a story with a believable and strong sibling relationship. Their relationship is challenged throughout, but reading siblings who turn up for each other seems rare and joyous.
Gonzalez doesn’t pause to explain the protagonists’ cultural language, challenging readers to put in a little extra effort to keep up with the Acevedo siblings in their fast-paced and compelling inner-, love-, professional- and family lives.
The plot is accompanied by a soundtrack. Music features strongly and characters are often selecting, playing, singing, dancing, listening, and reminiscing to songs (some of which I had heard before and a lot of which I hadn't).
I enjoyed Olga Dies Dreaming immensely.
- Katrina, Collins Booksellers Cottesloe
General Fields
- :
- : Little Brown
- : Fleet
- : 0.3
- : November 2021
- : books
Special Fields
- : Xochitl Gonzalez
- : Xochitl Gonzalez
- : BC
- : 1
- : 1
- : 813.6
- : 384
- : FA
