The Things We Didn’t Know

Perez’s rich English-language debut novel (after the nonfiction title El teatro como bandera) chronicles a girl’s 1960s upbringing in an isolated Massachusetts suburb with her strict Puerto Rican parents: Luis, a factory worker, and Raquel, a housewife who feels homesick and trapped. When Andrea Rodriguez is almost nine and her brother seven, their mother kidnaps them and takes them to Puerto Rico, where she abandons them with an aunt they’ve never met. Titi Machi unapologetically wears men’s clothing despite transphobic relatives back in Massachusetts, and she nurtures the love-starved siblings by tenderly braiding Andrea’s hair, ironing their school uniforms, and comforting them over their mother’s neglect. Almost a year later, Luis retrieves them. As a teen back in Massachusetts, Andrea’s forced to stay after school with an abusive aunt who guards her chastity. Perez viscerally portrays the children’s longing for their mother, which makes their resilience all the more affecting as Andrea draws on the example of Machi and others to break out of a cloistered life like her mother’s and make her own path. Perez proves to be a natural storyteller. Agent: Laurie Liss, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Feb.)