Carmen de Monteflores brings her intimate knowledge of Puerto Rican culture and history to this story of a rural mountain girl-a jíbara-struggling to become a teacher during the turbulent changes of the 1930s in the island. After a devastating hurricane, Juanita and her mother, Cisa, to whom she is fiercely attached, are forced to move to San Juan to find work. Like many others arriving from the country, they end up living in a slum. Unexpected circumstances introduce Juanita to Clara. They become close, but their lives take different paths. Juanita enters the university to be tested both by violent politics and her mother's illness. Clara's influential relatives introduce her to society life and her husband-to-be. Relationships become strained and lies and secrets explode when Juanita asks for help from a former teacher and from a close friend of Clara's as Cisa gets sicker and Clara's marriage collapses. "skillful...describes heart-rending poverty without sentimentality from the point of view of a child who has never known anything else....excels at rendering the thick accents of both Spanish and English speakers...a flair that is likely to trigger knowing laughter from bilingual readers...worth the read" - Kirkus Reviews