Vida

Fresh, accomplished, and fearless, <i>Vida</i> marks the debut of Patricia Engel, a young author of immense talent and promise. <i>Vida</i> follows a single narrator, Sabina, as she navigates her shifting identity as a daughter of the Colombian diaspora and struggles to find her place within and beyond the net of her strong, protective, but embattled family.<br> <br> In "Lucho," Sabina's family--already "foreigners in a town of blancos"--is shunned by the community when a relative commits an unspeakable act of violence, but she is in turn befriended by the town bad boy who has a secret of his own; in "Desaliento," Sabina surrounds herself with other young drifters who spend their time looking for love and then fleeing from it--until reality catches up with one of them; and in "Vida," the urgency of Sabina's self-imposed exile in Miami fades when she meets an enigmatic Colombian woman with a tragic past.<br> <br> Patricia Engel maps landscapes both actual and interior in this stunning debut, and the constant throughout is Sabina--serious, witty, alternately cautious and reckless, open to transformation yet skeptical of its lasting power. Infused by a hard-won, edgy wisdom, <i>Vida</i> introduces a sensational new literary voice.