Olga Dies Dreaming

August 1, 2021

Of Puerto Rican heritage, Olga Acevedo is a wedding planner to the rich and powerful while brother Pedro ("Prieto") serves their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood as congressman in their hometown, New York. Maybe, just maybe, Olga has finally found a love of her own, but then the mother who deserted the siblings years ago to pursue her increasingly radical beliefs crashes back into their lives. With a 300,000-copy first printing; Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Gonzalez won the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship.

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October 25, 2021
Gonzalez’s edifying debut follows a successful Puerto Rican Brooklynite with family baggage that increasingly disrupts her life. Olga, 40, a wedding planner and frequent guest on morning TV shows, rubs shoulders—and sometimes more—with her wealthy, powerful clients. Her older brother, Prieto, who is secretly gay, has risen through the local political ranks to become a U.S. congressman who represents their Sunset Park neighborhood. The siblings’ beloved papí, once a charismatic activist for Puerto Rican independence, fell into heroin addiction and died when Olga was still a teen, and their mamí remained true to the cause, leaving her children to work with a covert paramilitary group. Olga does not know, but Prieto has been the victim of blackmail for years by a couple of real estate moguls with whom she is acquainted, who’ve made a killing off their Puerto Rican community in Brooklyn. Details about their papí’s life and tragic death, as well as his blackmailers’ sinister intentions in Puerto Rico, add poignancy to Prieto’s troubles, and each sibling faces a crisis of conscience when Hurricane Maria hits and their mamí issues a dubious ultimatum. The expository dialogue often feels stilted, but the characters’ yearning to see the island thrive adds passion and complexity. Gonzalez elevates this family drama with a great deal of insight on the characters’ diaspora and politics.

December 15, 2021
Nuyorican Brooklynite Olga Acevedo is comfortable with her life and her flourishing business catering to the Manhattan elites and their nuptial needs, though she feels like she may not be living up to the expectations set by her scholarship-funded Ivy League education. She also thinks she has disappointed her mother, who abandoned their family to dedicate herself to the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican activist movement, and is now part of a new, very determined guerrilla group. Still, she harangues Olga and Olga's brother, Prieto, in letters that take the reader back to their childhood. Meanwhile Prieto, the charismatic congressperson representing their gentrifying Brooklyn borough, is subject to pressure and blackmail as a closeted homosexual. In her ambitious debut novel, Gonzalez explores such weighty topics as coercion, rape, gentrification, and the colonial exploitation so harshly exposed in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Shining throughout, however, is the redeeming quality of love in all its iterations: romantic, fraternal, paternal, patriotic, and ultimately, love of self.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Gonzalez's debut launches with big buzz, an enormous print run, and the news that it will be adapted for a Hulu series with Aubrey Plaza starring as Olga.

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Starred review from October 15, 2021
Warmhearted but tough-minded story of a sister and brother grappling with identity, family, and life goals in gentrifying Brooklyn. Olga and Prieto Acevedo grew up in Sunset Park, in one of the first Puerto Rican families to move into a then-White working-class neighborhood. Now Olga lives in a Fort Greene high-rise and is a very high-end wedding planner. Prieto is back in the family house with his grandmother after a divorce; he's a congressman fighting for his district--except when he's shifting his vote at the behest of the Selby brothers, sinister real estate developers who have compromising photos of very closeted Prieto having sex with a man. The siblings both have bad consciences about having compromised the ideals of their mother, a radical activist for Puerto Rican independence who abandoned the family when Olga was 12 and is now a fugitive. Vivid portraits of various friends and relatives capture the richness of Nuyorican culture, and sharp-eyed observations of the Brooklyn social and political landscape underpin a busy plot. It climaxes with the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, where their mother has become the leader of a revolutionary group called the Pa�uelos Negros. An actual boyfriend for the previously commitment-phobic Olga prompts her to reassess a career focused on making lots of money, while an HIV scare goads Prieto to question the need to hide his true self. Supported by T�a Lola and their cousin Mabel, sister and brother also begin to realize how their mother has manipulated them for years with her chastising letters, which are scattered throughout to offer grim examples of fanatical political commitment. Nonetheless, debut novelist Gonzalez's stinging and knowledgeable commentary about the American sociopolitical order that keeps Black and brown people poor and powerless suggests that radical remedies are called for, even if she gives the personal dramas of her appealing main characters pleasingly hopeful final acts. Atmospheric, intelligent, and well informed: an impressive debut.

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