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Family Lore cover art

Family Lore

By: Elizabeth Acevedo
Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo, Sixta Morel, Danyeli Rodriguez del Orbe
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Summary

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. 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?

But Flor isn't the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband's infidelity, but she now must confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor's wake motivates this driven woman to attempt to solve her sibling's problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, often the forgotten one, but she's decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted.

And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi, reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; and Ona, married for years and attempting to conceive.

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.

©2023 Elizabeth Acevedo (P)2023 Canongate Books

Critic reviews

"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 alive'. Acevedo has written unforgettable characters who breathe new life into how we grieve, age, take care of each other. Family Lore is big hearted novel, a wonderful debut!" (Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana)

"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)

"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." (Naima Coster, author of What's Mine and Yours)

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Wonderful novel

Another wonderful novel from Acevedo. She transports us to a world full of colour and music and love. One thing i dislike is how she always blames the Spanish for the problems of DR. Spanish people in Spain during the conquests went hungry and dirty. The average person was quite poor (the same as the average British or French during their empires). The blame should go to the gang of people that kill and subjugate and slave. European monarchies and aristocrats, all cousins of each other. They were like the mafia or narco families of today…and treated everyone, including members of their own families like objects for their own pleasure…
I will recommend this book to everyone. Young or old, male or female.

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