Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinalist!

Amazon.com has selected my novel Choosing Sides as a quarterfinalist in its third annual international competition for unpublished and previously self-published novels waiting to be discovered. The winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin.

Like any Amazon offering, my novel is open to customer reviews. While these do not determine who progresses to the semifinals and finals, the judges may read these reviews as they deliberate. I would welcome your customer reviews. You can download for free Amazon’s excerpt of Choosing Sides here. If you do not have a Kindle, Amazon provides on the right hand column an app for downloading Kindle capability to your PC or Mac; also, for free.

A description of Choosing Sides: Forced by ruinous poverty to emigrate from Puerto Rico to the Midwest, Angélica Miranda's family abandons its rain forest cabin for a two-room walk-up next to busy railroad tracks. They find the stark English language as unwelcoming as the frigid winter and yearn for the palm trees, gardenias, and gurgling mountain stream they left behind. This family of a former sugarcane field laborer is barely making ends meet when Angélica's father suffers a disabling industrial accident. Already esteemed by the Latino Pentecostal community for his spiritual wisdom and kindness, he accepts, after a protracted recovery, becoming their ill-paid minister. Angélica must now navigate two cultural divides: her American versus Puerto Rican worlds and also the secular world of school versus the spiritual one of church. After violent confrontations with her mother, Angélica abandons her parent's church and belief system, only to learn the high cost of choosing sides.

The semifinalists will be announced on April 27. I have my fingers crossed.