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by Juan Vidal
A father, a friend, and a favorite book help a teen boy understand love and loss in this moving and vivid YA novel in verse.
Have you ever encountered a book that KO'd you, Iron Mike Tyson style? One that hit you square in the face and heart like some abracadabra casting a hex from an unknown planet?
For sixteen-year-old poet and b-baller Marcos Cadena, that book is the beat-up copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude he finds among his late father's possessions after Papi is killed in an accident.
Marcos' papi has always loomed large in his eyes. So, when Marcos travels to his parents' childhood home of Cartagena, Colombia to spread Papi's ashes, he brings his father's book with him, convinced that Gabriel García Márquez's masterpiece holds the key to understanding Papi's life and accepting his death.
In Cartagena, Marcos befriends eighteen-year-old Camilo, a taxi driver and fellow García Márquez fan who appoints himself Marcos' unofficial tour guide. Together, the two boys explore the landscape of Cartagena, from the picturesque streets of Old Town to the poor neighborhood where Camilo grew up. But when Camilo reveals a troubling secret from his past, Marcos must ask himself whether everyone deserves a second chance.
Woven through with themes of friendship, family, and forgiveness, this poignant novel in verse is also a love letter to Colombia and to the books of Gabriel García Márquez.
"Heartfelt, moving, and beautifully written." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Through affecting verse, Vidal deftly examines themes of friendship, masculinity, grief, and redemption. The richly detailed Colombian background of this poignant exploration of the death of a parent is as alive and vibrant as its narrator." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Author Juan Vidal has done the impossible: Crafted a touching exploration of grief with Colombia and the legendary Gabriel Garcia Marquez as his guide. Poetic and raw, readers will fall for the basketball-loving romantic Marcus. A Second Chance on Earth marks Vidal's debut as a defining new literary force to be reckoned with." —Lilliam Rivera, award-winning author of Never Look Back
This information about A Second Chance on Earth 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.
Juan Vidal is the author of the memoir Rap Dad, which explores father-son dynamics and Latino masculinity through the lens of hip-hop culture. A Second Chance on Earth is his YA debut.
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