Little Gryphon

 

Clap When You Land

Description

Camina Rios lives in the Dominican Republic, but dreams of a future as a doctor with a degree from a prestigious American university. In the meantime, she lives with (and apprentices to) her Tia Solana, practitioner of healing rituals and prayers, and attends an international school thanks to money from her beloved Papi. He spends most of his time in New York City, being a very busy and important man, but tries to get home for a few months every year, even after her mother died. Some day, she wants to follow him back and see the city that seems more fable than reality from his stories... hopefully while she still has a chance to see her dreams come true.
Yahaira Rios lives with her mother in New York City, a solid (if quiet) student and chess master. At one time, she loved her father dearly, until she found a secret hidden in his papers while he was away visiting family back in the Dominican Republic: another wife, married a few months after he married her own mother. It's difficult to love a man who has lied to you since the day you were born, but she wants to love him, almost as much as she wants to expose him for the liar he is... but that will have to wait, as he's already on his flight out of the country. Maybe by the time he returns she'll know how to deal with the feelings tearing her apart inside.
Then comes the horrible news: Papi's plane has crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, with no survivors.
In their separate worlds, the two teenage girls - ignorant of each others' existence - grieve, even as Papi's death threatens to unravel their happiness and their futures.

Review

Clap When You Land is a novel told in free verse, a story of how complicated feelings of love and family can be when the people involved are complicated. Papi was clearly a liar and a cheater, yet he loved his daughters dearly, and provided them with what means he could. Camina never suspected his deceptions, yet has known something wasn't quite right with the arrangement of her life for some time, that there were secrets her tia and other relatives were withholding after her mother's untimely death. She struggles, too, with holding onto her dreams in a place that all too often crushes them, especially the dreams of girls like herself; part of Papi's protection was actually paying people to help keep the leeches and bullies away from his daughter, because girls like her too often get drug into unsavory situations by men turning a buck off the Dominican Republic's tourists. Yahaira, meanwhile, leaves a fairly privileged life in New York City, but has her own problems and struggles, brought to the forefront by Papi's death. Despite mutual shock and distrust when they find out about each other, the girls must pull together if either of them is to have a hope in this world. There are no neat and easy answers, no simplistic moral judgements, but characters who have all been harmed by their great love for a greatly flawed man. The novel is written in verse; the narrators of the audiobook I listened to (one for each girl, as the tale switches back and forth between them) do a decent job evoking that sense of poetry in their reading. I felt parts of the climax were a bit rushed or forced, but overall it's a solid story of two worlds colliding and two people struggling to come to terms with their great and complex grief.

 

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