Julia Alvarez’s brilliant and buoyant and beloved novel gives voice to four sisters recounting their adventures growing up in two cultures.

In this novel, the García sisters— Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía —and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow a tyrannical dictator is discovered. They arrive in New York City to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wild and wondrous and not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways, but the girls try find new lives.

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents sets the sisters free to tell their most intimate stories about how they came to be at home—and not at home—in America.