Your Heart My Sky. Margarita Engle. 2021. [March] 224 pages. [Source: Library]
First sentence: Imagine a year when food suddenly vanishes.
Premise/plot: Your Heart My Sky is a verse novel set in Cuba in 1991. (I will leave it up to you, dear readers, if that classifies it as historical fiction or not.) There are three narrators--Liana, the heroine, Amado, the hero, and Paz, the dog. Cuba is experiencing "el periodo especial en tiempos de paz." Though not in a time of war, food is hard--near impossible--to come by. The rations--what one is legally allowed to buy--are pitiful. No wonder people are desperate to leave the island and risk everything for a chance for a better tomorrow.
Your Heart My Sky is in many ways a bleak novel. Yet in this time of great bleakness--a land void of hope and promise--two young teens fighting to survive fall in love--with a dog, with each other. This is a matchmaking dog if you will...
My thoughts: If you are only looking for romance, then this may not be your easiest source. It doesn't shy away from the hard, uncomfortable places. Here we have a tyrannical government and a suffering people. The poems highlight the day to day suffering of a people. The hard--no, impossible--choices that every person must make. To stay or to go. Their lives are at risk either way. Staying to starve (possibly to be imprisoned, Amado's brother is in prison). Leaving brings its own risks and dangers--there is the possibility of getting caught which would be bad, bad, super-bad. There are many risks on the actual journey--by raft--you never know if you'll make it to America or not. There are no easy answers....
Yet this one also highlights the joys of life--the love and friendship of having a dog AND first love.
The writing, as always, is lovely.
Quote:
Maybe companionship
is the only answer
to all prayers.
© 2021 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
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