In conversation with Sharon Kurtzman, moderated by Carol Fitzgerald; 11:00 – 11:50 am at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
Jeanine Cummins
Jeanine Cummins is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of American Dirt, which was an Oprah’s Book Club and a Barnes & Noble Book Club selection, as well as a #1 Indie Next pick. The novel has been translated into thirty-seven languages and sold more than four million copies worldwide. Her other works include the memoir A Rip in Heaven and the novels The Outside Boy and The Crooked Branch. She lives in New York with her husband, their two daughters, and their dogs.
MFOB featured book: Speak to Me of Home
What does it mean to call a place home?
On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments.
In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. It’s not until decades later when Ruth’s own daughter, Daisy, returns to San Juan that her mother and grandmother begin to truly reflect on the choices that have come to define their lives.
When a hurricane ravages the island in 2023, leaving Daisy critically injured, Rafaela and Ruth return to the city where their story began. As they gather at Daisy’s bedside, we follow them back into the moments that brought them to this point: We watch as they come of age, fall in love, take risks, and contend with all the heartbreaks, triumphs, and reversals of fortune—both good and bad—that make up a meaningful life. As old memories come to light, so do buried secrets, leaving everyone in the family wondering exactly where it is that they belong.
A striking, resonant examination of marriage, family, and identity, Speak to Me of Home is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters that asks: How can three women who share geography and genetics have such wildly different ideas of where they come from? And, more important, can they discover a common language to find their way back home?
