Blood Fugues — Edgardo Vega Yunque

Kenny's mother was Frances Boyle, an Irish girl from the Bronx; his father, Tommy Romero, was a Puerto Rican born in East Harlem. The firstborn and favorite of this Dublin -- San Juan union bore his mother's easy-smiling Irish eyes and his father's air of quiet mystery.

His summer begins like others before: leaving the cradle of his Williamsburg home to work on a pastoral upstate farm. But soon he makes choices that bring him into direct conflict with nature and challenge his more primitive instincts for survival, while at home his family grapples with their tangled pasts and the consequences of decades of deceptions.

In sparse and elegant prose, Edgardo Vega Yunqué renders a tight, beautifully constructed novel about two families coming to terms with their stormy pasts and their hopes for the future.