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A Novel
by Harold Rogers
In the heady days before a New Year's Eve party on the bustling sands of Brazil's Copacabana Beach, a family reckons with a matriarch's long-awaited return, causing old secrets to come to light in this infectiously vibrant debut that explores the heartbreak and hope of what it means to be from two homes, two peoples, and two worlds.
Daniel Cunha has a lot on his mind.
He got dumped by his pregnant girlfriend, his grandfather just dropped dead, and on the anniversary of the raid that doomed his drug-dealing aunt and uncle, his mother makes her unwanted return, years after she fled to marry another American fool like his father.
Misfortune, however, is a Cunha family affair, and no generation is spared. Not Daniel's grandfather João—poor João—born to a prostitute and forced to raise his siblings while still a child himself. Not João's wife, Marta, branded as a bruxa, reviled by her mother, and dragged from her Ilha paradise by her scheming daughter, Maria. And certainly not Maria, so envious of her younger sister's beauty and benevolence that she took her vicious revenge and fled to the States, abandoning her children: Daniel and Lucia, both tainted now by their half-Americanness and their mother's greedy absence.
There's poison in the Cunha blood. They are a family cursed, condemned to the pain of deprivation, betrayal, violence, and, worst of all, love. But now Maria has returned to grieve her father and finally make peace with Daniel and Lucia, or so she says. As New Year's Eve nears, the Cunha family hurtles toward an irrevocable breaking point: a fire, a knife, and a death on the sands of Copacabana Beach.
Amid the cacophony of Rio's tumult—rampant poverty, political unrest, the ever-present threat of violence—a fierce chorus of voices rises above the din to ask whether we can ever truly repair the damage we do to those we love.
"Rogers debuts with the riotous and tragicomic story of a Rio de Janeiro family in turmoil over lies, infidelity, and parental abandonment...Rogers's plot sizzles as much as the Copacabana Beach where the party's fateful events play out. This packs a powerful punch." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Brazilian American Rogers' debut novel is polyphonic, raw, and a revelation…Through that darkness, glimmers of love, hope, and redemption shine through Rogers', by turns, shocking and brutal, effervescent and delightful tale....Young people will be moved by Daniel and Lucia's plight, challenges, and choices." —Booklist (starred review)
"A bacchanal of familial entanglements, as beautiful as it is brutal. This is a story of what happens when love is the midwife of destruction, trauma the cousin of redemption, and fate, the absentee mother of us all. I loved this book in all its parts, but as a whole, it left me awestruck." —Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
"With a tremendously powerful voice and a commanding hand, Harold Roger's Tropicália shoots us out of a cannon from page one...With riveting and fearless prose and moments of tension so thick they make your spine tingle, Tropicália weaves us in and out of the Cunha family's past and one inextricably linked week in their present that will force the siblings to decide if it's possible to escape fate and what it means to define ourselves on our own terms. This book and the humanity, humor and, yes, even rage, these characters made me feel, will stay with me for a long time." —Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming
"In these vibrant and hypnotizing pages, Harold has given us so much pain, grace, and love that when I finished reading I called my parents just to hear their voices." —Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau
"One of the most marvelous books I've read in years...Intense, tender, and wise, and it reminds us that for each way that a family is split, it is also doubled; and that for each fury, there's a resplendent underside of love." —Rivka Galchen, award-winning author of Atmospheric Disturbances
This information about Tropicalia was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Harold Rogers was born in Steubenville, Ohio, to an American father and a Brazilian mother and grew up between the United States and Rio de Janeiro. He holds a BA in philosophy from Miami University in Ohio, and an MFA from Columbia University. He lives in New York City, where he works as a boxing coach and a stand-up comedian. Tropicália is is first novel.
Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
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Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
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