Jennine Capó Crucet‘s debut novel, Make Your Home Among Strangers, tells the moving story of a young woman torn between generational, cultural, and political forces. Set in the vibrant coastal and Caribbean communities of Miami; the Florida Keys; Havana, Cuba; and Cartagena, Colombia;  Patricia Engel‘ s The Veins of the Ocean delivers a profound and riveting story of fractured lives finding solace and redemption in the natural world, and in one another. Derek Palacio’s The Mortifications follows the journey of a Cuban-American family from their exile on the Mariel boatlift to Hartford, Connecticut, where they try to settle, despite the absence of the family patriarch.