Speak to Me of Home

Cummins (American Dirt) serves up an engrossing if occasionally cloying family drama. In 2023 Palisades, N.Y., Ruth Hayes receives a phone call from a hospital in Puerto Rico. Her daughter, Daisy, who recently left college over Ruth’s objections and moved to the island, has been hit by a car. From there, the narrative rewinds to San Juan in 1968, as Daisy’s maternal grandmother, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón, prepares to marry her Irish American fiancé, Peter, despite his parents’ misgivings. Later, when Peter moves his wife and two small kids back to his native Missouri, the cracks in their marriage deepen. Cummins devotes later sections to Ruth, both as a child in St. Louis watching her mother struggle and as an adult, mystified by her own three children. When her youngest, born Charlie Hayes, decides to change his name to Carlos Hayes-Acuña, Ruth feels “a tiny flare of anger... what right did Charlie have to try [the name] on as if it were a costume?” Despite some melodramatic moments and convoluted twists, Cummins succeeds at breathing life into her large cast of characters and excels at depicting the nuances of a mother-daughter relationship. This is worth a look. (May)