Genre Fiction
![Elizabeth Acevedo - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B07MP9CCP7.jpg)
Family Lore: A Novel
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK!
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Today.com * Time * Electric Literature * Seattle Times * Telemundo * Washington Post * HipLatina * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * AARP * Shondaland * New York Times * The Millions * LitHub
From the bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake-a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led-her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.
But Flor isn't the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.
Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces-one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Today.com * Time * Electric Literature * Seattle Times * Telemundo * Washington Post * HipLatina * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * AARP * Shondaland * New York Times * The Millions * LitHub
From the bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake-a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led-her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.
But Flor isn't the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.
Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces-one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.
Editorial Reviews
"[A] vibrant family saga . . . . Acevedo wields her own sort of magic in her first novel for adults, deftly blending comedy and sorrow. Family Lore is an absorbing, entertaining portrait of a Dominican American woman whose exceptional relationship with death keeps her family - and readers - guessing." - Star Tribune
"Acevedo's treatment of magic as an everyday possibility is compelling, but there is also magic in the wonder, surprise, frustrations, and joys the characters experience in their relationships with one another. . . . [Family Lore] is also, like all her novels, the project of a poet: her obsession with imagery, interiority, and making every word count is what makes her descriptions and dialogue sing; her characters think and speak in voices that feel distinct and alive." - Nicole Chung, TIME
"Family Lore is a deeply Dominican book, full of raw emotional power. It is at once intimate and epic, one of the most resonant representations of a family and world like my own that I've ever read. There is so much to love about this wise, funny and original novel-and it's a singular contribution to Dominican diasporic letters." - Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What's Mine and Yours
"Elizabeth Acevedo's Family Lore is a sweeping multi-generational story of a family of women whose special powers have helped them overcome personal, familial, and historical challenges that both bond them together and at times threaten to pull them apart but ultimately navigate them into the full abrazos of love. Acevedo is in full command of her special powers as a storyteller of compassionate, capacious and lyrical imagination. Make room on your shelves, readers, for this strong new voice with an old soul and a deep well of understanding of who we wonderfully are for the brief time we are beings." - Julia Alvarez, author of Afterlife and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
"Flor is throwing herself a wake and reminding us that ‘even a long life is too short.' So while we are here ‘let's eat, and dance, and be ali...
"Acevedo's treatment of magic as an everyday possibility is compelling, but there is also magic in the wonder, surprise, frustrations, and joys the characters experience in their relationships with one another. . . . [Family Lore] is also, like all her novels, the project of a poet: her obsession with imagery, interiority, and making every word count is what makes her descriptions and dialogue sing; her characters think and speak in voices that feel distinct and alive." - Nicole Chung, TIME
"Family Lore is a deeply Dominican book, full of raw emotional power. It is at once intimate and epic, one of the most resonant representations of a family and world like my own that I've ever read. There is so much to love about this wise, funny and original novel-and it's a singular contribution to Dominican diasporic letters." - Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What's Mine and Yours
"Elizabeth Acevedo's Family Lore is a sweeping multi-generational story of a family of women whose special powers have helped them overcome personal, familial, and historical challenges that both bond them together and at times threaten to pull them apart but ultimately navigate them into the full abrazos of love. Acevedo is in full command of her special powers as a storyteller of compassionate, capacious and lyrical imagination. Make room on your shelves, readers, for this strong new voice with an old soul and a deep well of understanding of who we wonderfully are for the brief time we are beings." - Julia Alvarez, author of Afterlife and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
"Flor is throwing herself a wake and reminding us that ‘even a long life is too short.' So while we are here ‘let's eat, and dance, and be ali...
Readers Top Reviews
OM
Elizabeth Acevedo is one of my instant buy authors. The sheer art in every Elizabeth Acevedo book, the emotions, the feelings, the family. There is so much as WOC that I felt and Elizabeth Acevedo has a talent for healing parts of yourself that you didn't know needed healing.
