Evamar

In alternating sections, two teens narrate this spellbinding identity-focused verse novel from Engle (Island Creatures). After her beloved folklorist grandmother, Evasol, dies, third-generation Cuban American 17-year-old Evamar sets out for Cuba with detailed instructions to return Evasol’s remains to her garden. Shorter interstitials follow 18-year-old Río, a talented percussionist who was deported to Cuba at 16 after spending most of his life in Florida. Alongside her older brother Cedro, Evamar—raised by her linguist father and archaeologist mother in Elizabeth, N.J.—makes her first trip through Cuba with other young Cuban Americans. When she meets Río, hired to translate for her tour group, their attraction is immediate: “Are we really/ reading/ each/ other’s/ translucent/ minds?” They approach their connection cautiously, mindful of their impending separation, but their bond intensifies when they discover, and vow to disseminate, a dictionary of both their ancestors’ disappearing Taíno language and its links to other vanishing Indigenous tongues. Lyrical narration is rendered with a striking mix of romanticism and reality (“The night sky becomes a waterfall/ of sound/ and/ stars”), with Spanish text—accompanied by translations—smoothly incorporated throughout. It’s an immersive love song to the power of both ancestral history and first romance. Ages 12–up. Agent: Michelle Humphrey, Martha Kaplan Agency. (July)