If I Bring You Roses
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A passionate story of love and hope that has "everything you want in a novel—flawed, complicated characters, lush descriptions, breathtaking plot, and a fierce beating heart" (Tayari Jones, New York Times bestselling author of An American Marriage).
In a small town in Puerto Rico, Felicidad Hidalgo spends her days serving busybodies in her aunt's bakery, and her nights dreaming of home. Closing her eyes she can almost hear the sweet songs of tree frogs, reminding her of the mountain village of her childhood, and the family she hasn't seen in nearly a decade. Her new life in town has delivered her from poverty, but not from loneliness—until the afternoon Aníbal walks through the door.
Aníbal Acevedo is not in need of a wife, but when he meets Felicidad while visiting family, he is stunned by the power of his attraction. Almost before he realizes what's happening, he has taken the girl into his bed and into his home—in Chicago. Yet soon the young lovers discover that married life is anything but idyllic. Can they find the courage to overcome the obstacles and temptations of their new world and rediscover the passion they once shared? Or will each find love and redemption in the arms of another?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Inspired by her own family history, Vera's debut offers vivid evocations of place, but a predictable story in which love requires compromise regardless of traditional gender roles. The novel opens in a poverty-stricken community in Puerto Rica in the summer of 1942. Eldest daughter Felicidad Hidalgo, who shares a tiny, makeshift house with her parents and seven siblings, must try to succeed as the female head of the household since she can't rely on her mentally unstable mother. Life takes a happier turn when she is sent to live and work in her aunt's richer household. Hard-working and determined to create a better future for herself, Felicidad finds her loins aflame with desire when she meets sex-crazed playboy An bal Acevedo, who is immediately attracted to her purity and innocence. The couple marries and Felicidad eventually moves to Chicago to join her husband. The decade's social changes test their Puerto Rican cultural traditions, and An bal's infidelity tests their young marriage. While the novel accurately portrays the conflicts of traditional husband-wife gender roles in the post-war 1950s, the abundance of internal, male-chauvinistic sexual monologues and thoughts can be off-putting.
