BOOK REVIEW: FLORES AND MISS PAULA
MELISSA RIVERO
Ecco Books
2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-327249-1
At thirty-something, sharing an apartment with her mother, Paula, is not Flores’ idea of adulthood, freedom or independence. But now that Paula is a widow, Flores must find a way to help her mother cope with the loss of her husband and move on. At the same time, Flores has to deal with her own grief at losing her father, while trying to launch her life and career.
Mother and daughter attempt to support each other and get along, but their choices and understanding of life often clash. Paula wants her daughter to find a nice young man, marry and settle down. Flores wishes her mother would admit when she’s wrong and apologize. She would also prefer to see her mother choose best friends that aren’t always married men.
And she’s never sure if her latest headache is induced by her mother.
When a situation arises that they have to move out of their current apartment, the two women must decide if they should each go their separate ways, or if they can find a way to live together and create a mutual future with new hopes and dreams.
Flores is every child that values the sacrifices of their immigrant parents to create a better life for them. But she also longs to forge her own new path. The challenge is how to go forward without losing the past that she still values and which holds part of her identity.
Paula is every mother who wants a happy and better life for her daughter, but is unskilled at navigating the minefield of when to hang on and when to let go. And as an immigrant, and a widow, she must find the resources within herself to start a new life; whatever that may look like.
Both women struggle to make past and present converge into something new without losing the essential essence of who they are, and where they came from, while they explore their future destinations. The question is, Can they grow together? Or will they grow apart?
A story of loss, forgiveness, and love, Flores and Miss Paula, is a down-to-earth novel of learning what it means to be family, building a new life in a new country, and the tender yet sometimes frustrating relationship between a mother and a daughter.
Veronica Jorge
See you next time on September 22nd!
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It’s the dead of winter and I’m still raking leaves and collecting branches that the winds have broken and scattered; all of which will eventually be ground into mulch and reused and reclaimed to nourish the soil. I even pick up a few feathers from fallen birds; taking off my gloves to feel the smoothness of the feathers, and to admire the colors and designs in each one.
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Featured Author Veronica Jorge credits her love of history to the potpourri of cultures that make up her own life and to her upbringing in diverse Brooklyn, New York.
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Featured Author Veronica Jorge credits her love of history to the potpourri of cultures that make up her own life and to her upbringing in diverse Brooklyn, New York.
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The last of the leaves have fallen from the trees and covered the ground in colors of orange, yellow, red and green.
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I didn’t lose my voice. I just can’t find the heart of my story or the right words to express it.
Nothing Found
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