What's left unspoken

Place and identity are central to American Dirt author's latest.

- BY SUE REIDY

Seven years on from American Dirt, her page-turning novel telling the story of a Mexican mother and her son fleeing for their lives to the US after a cartel-inflicted family tragedy, Jeanine Cummins delivers a quite different tale. Fans of American Dirt, of which there are many, despite an outcry over the author not being Mexican, should not expect another thriller. Speak to Me of Home is a sprawling family saga, the affectionate portrait of a Puerto Rican family. And it's closer to the author's roots. Cummins' grandmother is Puerto Rican.

Not surprisingly, belonging and identity are central themes in Speak to Me of Home. They are conveyed through the alternating perspectives of three generations of women. Rafaela, a woman in her early 70s, and her daughter Ruth, both Puerto Rican-born, now live in Palisades, New York - sometimes called "Hollywood on the Hudson" because of all the well-known actors living there. Ruth's 22-year-old daughter Daisy has defied her mother's desire for her to pursue a university education, choosing instead to leave the US and live in San Juan, Puerto Rico.