First published 2011
Ana Larragoity Cubillas grows up in Spain dreaming of Puerto Rico after reading her ancestor's diaries from travels with Ponce de León. Twin brothers Ramón and Inocente both want to marry her, but Ana chooses Ramón as her path to the island. At eighteen in 1844, she crosses the ocean to help run Hacienda los Gemelos, the sugar plantation the brothers inherited. The tropical heat, disease, and isolation test her, but Ana throws herself into managing the estate. When the American Civil War erupts, the plantation's enslaved workers threaten everything Ana has built. Their stories interweave with hers as tensions rise. Ana eventually meets a man she cannot have, a forbidden love that forces her to risk everything she values to protect the land that has become her true home.
Genres: romance, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, american, 19th-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, forbidden-love, second-chance
Setting: Puerto Rico, Spain
Period: 1844, American Civil War
432 pages · Hardcover · Knopf
Content warnings: colonialism, slavery