This Is the Only Kingdom

Díaz’s textured debut novel (after the memoir Ordinary Girls) finds a mother and daughter struggling to live on their own terms in Puerto Rico. In the prologue, set in 1993, a dead body is discovered in the island’s cane fields after a devastating fire. Díaz then rewinds to tell the story of protagonist Maricarmen, whose family was forced to move into a public housing project called el Caserío. At 16 in 1975, she spends her summer cleaning houses and babysitting. One of her clients, Doña Iris, is dying of cancer and asks Maricarmen to help care for her baby, Tito. Through this connection, Maricarmen gets to know Doña Iris’s older son, known as Rey el Cantante, a gifted singer and petty thief beloved by el Caserío’s residents and reviled by the police for sharing his bounty with his neighbors. Maricarmen and Rey fall in love, but because Rey’s skin is darker, Maricarmen’s mother kicks her out. She then drops out of school and marries Rey, who’s often high on drugs, and they have a daughter, Nena. As the story unfolds, revealing the identity of the victim from the fire and chronicling Nena’s difficult coming-of-age as a young queer woman, Díaz offers a complex view of el Caserío and the residents’ shifting allegiances. It’s a moving family drama. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management. (Oct.)