Showing results for "Angie" in Coming of Age

Fifteen-year-old Ana Canción never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she must say yes. It doesn't matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year's Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights.

Ana Canción, de quince años, nunca soñó con mudarse a Estados Unidos, como lo hicieron las niñas con las que creció en el campo dominicano. Pero cuando Juan Ruiz propone y promete llevarla a la ciudad de Nueva York, ella tiene que decir que sí. No importa que tenga el doble de su edad, que no haya amor entre ellos. Su matrimonio es una oportunidad para que toda su familia unida pueda eventualmente emigrar.

As I’ve gotten older, I recognize that life is full of terrible irony. Lying undetected on the fringes of our day-to-day schedules, it’s everywhere - like with the love that blindsided me and destroyed my entire family. I had spent long, hard years waiting and longing for the time to come when I would be allowed to leave home, to finally escape my tyrannical crime boss mother. Then Angie filled my heart with her love, and I hated it each time that I had to leave.

When Alison Hayes walks into her storm-darkened trailer the afternoon of her 16th birthday, she has no idea that it will be the beginning of a year like no other. Her mother has lost her job again, the most stable man they've ever had in their lives is looking for the nearest exit, and her best friend is dating the prom queen. She can't remember the last time anything good had happened to her. If the rails still passed through town, she would definitely be on the wrong side, always looking across to everyone else.

When Alison Hayes finds herself suddenly set free in the world to build her life out of the crumbled ruins of her childhood, she must come to terms with her own demons before she can make her way out of the chaos left by her mother's life. Were people right to think she would follow the same road her mother traveled, or would Alison be able to forge a new path? Is she destined to repeat the mistakes of her mother, or is she free to make choices for a better way? When there are opportunities to make good choices, how will she ever know which choice is right?

Alison Hayes is set to fly or flee. When she follows her friend, Cici, to California she hopes it will be the beginning of a new, perfect life. She has spent her days trying to do something better, trying not to repeat the mistakes made by her alcoholic and broken mother. Yet, she is haunted by the only "right thing" she has ever done being the one thing she couldn't keep.

Alison Hayes is antsy - that’s what her mother would have said. The ghosts from her past are walking, and something is coming. For 10 years, she has stayed on the fringe of society, living a quiet, nearly invisible life, working nights as a nurse at the hospital and sleeping days. When her volunteer work at the Crisis Clinic sets her on a collision course with a pregnant teen, Alison finds herself plunging without a parachute. She must reconcile her own history as her obsession with the girl mounts.

A novel told in short stories, follow young Ellen as she narrates each story of love, loss, longing, friendship, and entrapment. Inspired by the artistry of the Beatles, each story is framed by a Beatles song or actual Beatles event.