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A timely and thought-provoking story about a teen girl shouldering impossibly large responsibilities and ultimately learning that she doesn't have to do it alone from the award-winning author of Indivisible.
Every morning, sixteen-year-old Sol wakes up at the break of dawn in her hometown of Tijuana, Mexico and makes the trip across the border to go to school in the United States. Though the commute is exhausting, this is the best way to achieve her dream: becoming the first person in her family to go to college.
When her family's restaurant starts struggling, Sol must find a part-time job in San Diego to help her dad put food on the table and pay the bills. But her complicated school and work schedules on the US side of the border mean moving in with her best friend and leaving her family behind.
With her life divided by an international border, Sol must come to terms with the loneliness she hides, the pressure she feels to succeed for her family, and the fact that the future she once dreamt of is starting to seem unattainable. Mostly, she'll have to grapple with a secret she's kept even from herself: that maybe she's relieved to have escaped her difficult home life, and a part of her may never want to return.
"Sol's character is complex, as her identity is torn between worlds. …The stream-of-consciousness narrative grabs the hearts of readers and is perfect for building empathy as a mirror, window, or sliding glass door." ―School Library Journal
"A coming-of-age narrative with no easy answers but in which hope blooms." —Kirkus Reviews
"Aleman's direct, accessible prose believably conveys the heavy responsibility teens carry as they support their struggling families. ….(T)he emotional stakes here are compelling, and amidst all the hardship, Aleman inserts potent moments of joy and connection, the power of female friendship, and the perseverance of possibility." ―BCCB
"Aleman effortlessly draws in the reader with a character-driven novel of survival laced with optimistic themes of growth, perseverance, and accepting change." ―Booklist
This information about Brighter Than the Sun 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.
Daniel Aleman is the award-winning author of Indivisible. Born and raised in Mexico City, he has lived in various places across North America and is currently based in Toronto, where he is on a never-ending search for the best tacos in the city. Brighter Than the Sun is his second novel.
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