When fifteen-year-old Cuban American Mariana Ruiz’s father runs for president, Mari starts to see him with new eyes. A novel about waking up and standing up, and what happens when you stop seeing your dad as your hero—while the whole country is watching. In this thoughtful, authentic, humorous, and gorgeously written novel about privacy, waking up, and speaking up, Senator Anthony Ruiz is running for president. Throughout his successful political career he has always had his daughter’s vote, but a presidential campaign brings a whole new level of scrutiny to sheltered fifteen-year-old Mariana and the rest of her Cuban American family, from a 60 Minutes–style tour of their house to tabloids doctoring photos and inventing scandals. As tensions rise within the Ruiz family, Mari begins to learn about the details of her father’s political positions, and she realizes that her father is not the man she thought he was. But how do you find your voice when everyone’s watching? When it means disagreeing with your father—publicly? What do you do when your dad stops being your hero? Will Mari get a chance to confront her father? If she does, will she have the courage to seize it?
Author
Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia Sylvester is an award-winning writer of novels, essays, and poetry. CHASING THE SUN was named the Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad Magazine and EVERYONE KNOWS YOU GO HOME won an International Latino Book Award and the 2019 Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her debut YA novel, RUNNING, was a 2020 Junior Library Guild Selection and her sophomore YA, BREATHE AND COUNT BACK FROM TEN, will be out in May 2022 from HarperCollins/Clarion Books. Sylvester's essays have appeared in the New York Times, Bustle, Catapult, Latina magazine, and McSweeney’s Publishing, and have been widely anthologized. She received a BA in creative writing from the University of Miami and now lives and writes in South Florida.
