The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico

It is 1961 and Puerto Rico is trapped in a tug-of-war between those who want to stay connected to the United States and those who are fighting for independence. For eleven-year-old Verdita Ortiz-Santiago, the struggle for independence is a battle fought much closer to home. Verdita has always been safe and secure in her sleepy mountain town, far from the excitement of the capital city of San Juan or the glittering shores of the United States, where her older cousin lives. She will be a señorita soon, which, as her mother reminds her, means that she will be expected to cook and clean, go to Mass every day, choose arroz con pollo over hamburguesas, and give up her love for Elvis. And yet, as much as Verdita longs to escape this seemingly inevitable future and become a blond American bombshell, she is still a young girl who is scared by late-night stories of the chupacabra, who wishes her mother would still rub her back and sing her a lullaby, and who is both ashamed and exhilarated by her changing body. Told in luminous prose spanning two years in Verdita’s life, The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico is much more than a story about getting older. In the tradition of The House on Mango Street and Annie John, it is about the struggle to break free from the people who have raised us, and about the difficulties of leaving behind one's homeland for places unknown. At times joyous and at times heartbreaking, Verdita’s story is of a young girl discovering her power and finding the strength to decide what sort of woman she’ll become.

Special Agent Robin Perez, Federal Bureau of Narcotics, has a new assignment brings him back to the island where he spent his teenage years as an army brat. The island, Puerto Rico, has become springboard in the traffic of narcotics toward the United States. Times have changed. The criminal unrest is threatening. The island is not as peaceful as it was when he was a student. More people are getting caught in the crossfire. There are factions trying to pull the island toward independence. Law enforcement results are slow. Robin is at odds with the heads of the Bureau. His previous assignments caused some hiccups but they know he gets the job done. He does not believe that keeping the drugs on the island (containment) is the solution. His plan to purchase of 500 kilos of cocaine is the opportunity to bring down the source of the drug distribution. He must go undercover and abandon his identity assuming a new one as a successful drug dealer. His life will be in constant danger.

While curious of the world outside her Amish community, Annie Finley's love for her husband, Daniel, and their son, Jacob, is why she's content to stay. A devastating accident one stormy night changes that, propelling Annie beyond those boundaries. With the help of two women who sell Annie's quilts, she learns those responsible for the accident are ruthless owners of a newspaper dynasty who'll do anything to keep the presses running. A plan is devised enabling Annie to shed her simplicity and travel to Philadelphia where she infiltrates that dynasty, moving amongst them as one of them until the moment when she must make her move—a move with grave consequences reaching all the way to the White House in a fight over the Second Amendment.

Henderson tells the true story behind Stephen Grant, a Detroit stay-at-home dad who reported his high-powered wife as missing and later confessed to her murder. photos. Original.

Promise and Snow-po Vacation In Puerto Rico is a short picture book of all the wonderful places to visit and culture to enjoy on the island of Puerto Rico.

One of "The Best Memoirs of a Generation" (Oprah's Book Club): a young woman's journey from the mango groves and barrios of Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, and eventually on to Harvard In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity. In the first of her three acclaimed memoirs, Esmeralda brilliantly recreates her tremendous journey from the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years, to translating for her mother at the welfare office, and to high honors at Harvard.

"Leckie is a gifted writer with the ability to explain complicatedmilitary matters in layperson's terms, while sustaining the dramainvolved in a life-and-death struggle. His portraits of the keyplayers in that struggle . . . are seamlessly interwoven with hisexciting narrative." -Booklist"As always, [Leckie] describes themaneuvers, battles, and results in telling detail with a cinematicstyle, and his portraits . . . are first-rate."-The Dallas MorningNews"Leckie's accounts of battles, important individuals, and therole of Native Americans bring to life the distant drama of theFrench and Indian Wars."-The Daily Reflector With his celebrated sense of drama and eye for colorful detail,acclaimed military historian Robert Leckie charts the long, savageconflict between England and France in their quest for supremacy inpre-Revolutionary America. Packed with sharply etched profiles ofall the major players-including George Washington, Samuel deChamplain, William Pitt, Edward Braddock, Count Frontenac, JamesWolfe, Thomas Gage, and the nobly vanquished Marquis deMontcalm-this panoramic history chronicles the four great colonialwars: the War of the Grand Alliance (King William's War), the Warof the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War), the War of theAustrian Succession (King George's War), and the decisive Frenchand Indian War (the Seven Years' War). Leckie not only providesperspective on exactly how the New World came to be such a fiercelycontested prize in Western Civilization, but also shows us exactlywhy we speak English today instead of French-and reminds us howeasily things might have gone the other way.

During the final seconds of his life Jorge Blanco’s past appears as a spiraled succession of images on a dynamic canvas. Deluded by the conviction of a religious vocation and motivated by the desire to escape his troubled home life, Jorge migrates from Puerto Rico to Minnesota, where he joins a Benedictine monastery. Jorge’s dismay at the reality of monastic hypocrisy, however, drives him to a cynical outrage, with fatal consequences. Tropical Snow is set against the backdrop of life in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico during the first half of the twentieth century and in the mainland in the early 1970s. Jorge’s life becomes a fluid metaphor that simultaneously reflects and becomes the history of his homeland—dreams soiled and promises betrayed—and the role that the Catholic Church played in its downfall.