A Second Chance on Earth

Gr 7 Up–Still shaken by the sudden loss of his father, Marcos first copes by playing basketball nonstop. But after discovering an old copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, he is inspired to write poetry, “trying to make sense/ of what I was feeling.” Soon after, he travels from Miami to Cartagena, Colombia, alongside his mother and younger sister to scatter Papi’s ashes in his hometown. There, Marcos befriends Camilo, an 18-year-old cab driver with a dark past, and the two bond over their love of Gabriel García Márquez while cruising the city in Camilo’s dented taxi. Marcos’s narrative voice bears the cool mien of a teenage boy and intertwines with evocative stanzas that capture tender memories of Papi, and bring the northern Colombian setting vividly to life through sights (“by the white sands/ blue-green waters”) and sounds (“¡Que chimba!”). The journey of a second-generation teen connecting with his parents’ home country in his own right is underscored by ruminations on manhood (“only boy in a tribe/ of women and girls”) and an ode to literature in Vidal’s profound YA debut.