Vanessa Diffenbaugh

This novel, Diffenbaugh’s second after her popular Language of Flowers, is deserving of praise as well. Letty, unmarried mother of two and daughter of Mexican parents, is living in a poor section of town by the San Francisco airport while her mother has returned to Mexico to join her father in their ancestral home. Angry, fearful and inadequate, Letty struggles to find her place with the two children—Alex, scientifically gifted at 15 years old, and vivacious, 6-year-old Luna—both of whom had initially been given to their grandmother to raise while Letty continued her life. Now the opportunities and challenges they all face include escaping to a safer neighborhood and better schools, working to free a loved friend from immigration services, and deciding how to form a family for the first time. – Sue Fleming