Digitized by the Internet Archive 2013 in http://archive.org/details/soledadOOcruz 1 Soledad Angie Cruz Simon & Schuster NewYork London Toronto Sydney Singapore AL BR CRUZ %4 A SIMON & SCHUSTER Rockefeller Center 1230Avenue ofthe Americas NewYork, NY 10020 Thisbookis awork offiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents eitherare products ofthe author's imagination orare used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events orlocales orpersons, livingor dead, isentirely coincidental. Copyright © 2001 byAngie Cruz All rights reserved, including the right ofreproduction inwhole orinpart in any form. SIMON & SCHUSTERand colophon are registered trademarks & ofSimon Schuster Inc. Forinformation regardingspecial discounts forbulkpurchases, & please contact Simon Schuster Special Sales: 1-800-456-6798 [email protected] Designed byDeirdre C. Amthor Manufactured in theUnited States ofAmerica 123456789 10 LibraryofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cruz,Angie. Soledad/Angie Cruz p. cm. — 1. Wash—ingtonHeights (NewYork,—N.Y.) Fiction. 2. Dominican Americans Fiction. 3. Youngwomen Fiction. I. Title. PS3603.R89S65 2001 813'6—dc21 2001032831 ISBN 0-7432-1201-0 For my mother Acknowledgments Many thanks: To the Fundacion Valparaiso, Millay Colony for the Arts, Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and the Macdowell Colony, for pro- viding me with a room of my own so 1 could get the writing done. To the Bronx Writers' Center for the Van Lier Literary Fellowship, to New York Foundation of the Arts and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, for their generous financial support, which provided me with the time to write this novel. To the NYU Creative Writing Program, where I was awarded fellowships so 1 could spend most of my time writing while completingmy M.FA., includingthe Georgia Shreve Fellowship and the Goldwater Fellowship. To the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, the National Hispanic Foundation Scholarship and the William Smart Travel Grant. Also to Project 1000 and the Institute of Recruit- ment ofTeachers, which facilitated my applying to M.FA. programs. — To my agent, Ellen Levine I feel blessed to have her and her incred- ible staffbehind my work; to my editor, Marysue Rucci, whose trust in my ability to finish this novel made it so easy to take creative risks; to her amazing assistant, Tara Parsons. Thank you to Bill Cosby for inspiring me to write and believing in my potential so early on in my writing life; to Carole Boyce Davies, who encouraged me to apply for the Caribbean Writers Institute Fellowship in 1Q96, which awarded me five magical weeks to write, and there I found the strength and permission to start this novel; to Liz Rosenberg, forbeingan amazingteacher; to David Allen, forhis love and fierce ded- ication to the earlier versions ofthis novel; to Noah and Lisa Wichman,