Blaming herself for the horrifying crime that sent her brother to death row, Reina Castillo moves to a sleepy town in the Florida Keys, where a friendship with an exiled Cuban helps her understand her connection to the life-giving and destructive forces of the ocean.

Fresh, accomplished, and fearless, Vida marks the debut of Patricia Engel, a young author of immense talent and promise. Vida follows a single narrator, Sabina, as she navigates her shifting identity as a daughter of the Colombian diaspora and struggles to find her place within and beyond the net of her strong, protective, but embattled family. In "Lucho," Sabina's family-already "foreigners in a town of blancos"-is shunned by the community when a...