Olga Dies Dreaming
NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller - INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARD FINALIST - A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots--all in the wake of Hurricane Maria
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, Vogue, Esquire, Book Riot, Goodreads, EW, Reader's Digest, and more!
Don't underestimate this new novelist. She's jump-starting the year with a smart romantic comedy that lures us in with laughter and keeps us hooked with a fantastically engaging story. --The Washington Post
It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are boldfaced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's power brokers.
Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1 percent but she can't seem to find her own. . . until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.
Olga and Prieto's mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife, and the very notion of the American dream--all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.
Xochitl Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming. Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Time, Kirkus, Boston Globe, Vogue, Bustle, and more, Olga Dies Dreaming was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, an Indies Introduce Pick, an Indie Next Pick, and Amazon's Featured Debut of the month. Xochitl received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and the recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship for Fiction. She was the winner of the 2019 Disquiet Literary Prize and her work has been published on Bustle, Vogue, and The Cut. She is a contributor to The Atlantic, where her weekly newsletter Brooklyn, Everywhere explores gentrification of people and places. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, she lives in her hometown of Brooklyn with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.
