A Falling Star: A Novel (Bakwin Award) - Softcover

Chantel Acevedo’s novels include Love and Ghost Letters (St. Martin's Press), which won the Latino International Book Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book of the Year, Song of the Red Cloak, a historical novel for young adults, A Falling Star (Carolina Wren Press), winner of the Doris Bakwin Award, and National Bronze Medal IPPY Award, and The Distant Marvels, (Europa Editions), one of Booklist's Top Ten Historical Novels of 2015. THE LIVING INFINITE, a novel about the Infanta Eulalia, is forthcoming from Europa Editions in 2017. Her fiction and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Poetry Review, North American Review, and Chattahoochee Review, and in chapbook form, among others. Acevedo is currently an Associate Professor of English in the MFA Program of the University of Miami.

Chantel Acevedo has created a world so steeped in longing and lore that it's entirely possible missing children can fall star-like from the sky, or emerge fish-like from the ocean. This haunting novel delivers not only secrets and lies, pounding guilt and grief, but glorious redemption. --Marie Manilla, author of The Patron Saint of Ugly and Shrapnel

A Falling Star is a novel in tapestry form, interwoven from the various threads of an exiled Cuban family, which is tied to the mystery of one daughter s disappearance during the ocean crossing. The surviving daughter, Daysy, is the inquisitive Penelope figure who weaves and unweaves the story of her family through old photos, newspaper articles, and constant questioning. Chantel Acevedo writes with insight and tenderness about the complex reality of unanchored lives both in Cuba and in the U.S., while at the same time involving us in a captivating tale of loss and redemption. --Judith Ortiz Cofer, author of The Latin Deli and The Meaning of Consuelo

The enduring love for a lost sister is the focus of this beautifully written novel set against the chaotic backdrop of the Mariel Boatlift. Daysy del Pozo is having a hard enough time dealing with adolescence when her beloved grandfather reveals an explosive family secret in the confusion of dementia. What really happened to the del Pozo family after a rescue at sea creates a gripping mystery, and the suspense builds to a dramatic climax and bittersweet dénouement. The homesickness, fragmentation, and disorientation of the Miami exile community are vividly portrayed and deeply moving. This is a beautiful story about instincts that keeps families together in even the most horrifying of circumstances. --Sandra Rodriguez Barron, author of The Heiress of Water and Stay with Me