V's Pick #1: The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico by Sarah McCoy

So, I must admit that I haven't been able to keep a book going since I read Vonnegut's Galapagos around um, August. Don't get me wrong, I've picked up about 40 books since, but turns out, I've become 1.) easily bored with reading and 2.) totally impatient with writing that doesn't grab me by the heart in the first few sentences. I didn't fully realize the effects that the last year of speed-reading and skimming (oh, grad school) had on me until this blog. I've been trying to find a book to read for almost three weeks now and nothing has been sticking. Honestly, I was starting to kind of panic, wondering if I've lost my reading mojo, if I've underlined and annotated so much that I can't just READ anymore. Then, I found this book on a random library trip and while I can't say I "couldn't put it down" (because I did, often, it's 200 pages took me almost 2 weeks to get through and it's not a tough read)...I can say that I stuck with it.

11 year-old Verdita narrates this coming-of-age tale which takes place in PR in the 1960s. She struggles to understand her own spirituality in her Catholic/ mystic barrio: "I guessed if you prayed long and hard enough you could change the color of wood" -- "I was supposed to pray but I heard Elvis in my head."

She sees her parents having sex: "She had stolen him, swept him under her ocean."

She loves all things American: "Maybe the food grew from American beans - fields of friend onions and hamburger buns."

She drinks for the first time: "Coconut fire candy!"

She wants to look American: "Straight and blonde to my shoulders."

She discovers her body: "The softness grew hard, and I noticed a lump beneath each tip. Breasts!"

She deals with new life and new death: "Orange like a new sun. I think his twin sister is the moon. She let him rise, but it meant she couldn't stay."

...and that's just a small sample. To experience her story is to taste the rice and beans, to understand what snow means on an island and to feel the hot breath of the Chupacabra. McCoy's writing seduces you into Verdita's poetic and introspective, curious and (mostly) brave world; it spills forth a tale we can all relate to...trying to find yourself among the people who have made you who you are while at the same time, knowing that those people may hold you back from who you want to become. Sin and survival, nature and corn husks, heels and magic, The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico will remind you of a time when you too, wanted to shed your skin to grow up.