When Rennie's parents die in a freak accident, he does what they would have wanted and buries them in Puerto Rico, their homeland. There, he's shocked to discover that the woman who raised him was not his biological mother. A high-powered attorney, his birth mother Julia is determined to reclaim the son she gave up many years before.
Adrift, with no family in New York and haunted by memories, Rennie is swayed by Julia's constant pleading that he move to the island. A teaching job at a college in Puerto Rico decides it, and he finds himself flying "home" to a place and culture he knows only through his parents' recollections. Once there, he must deal with Julia's strong-willed nature, a department chair not thrilled to have a Nuyorican on staff, squatters living in the house he inherited, students frequently on strike and a lover anxious to settle down. Most disturbing is the rumor that numerous faculty and staff are dying from cancer because the campus, a former U.S. military base, is full of buried munitions.
Rennie soon finds himself working to expose the government's lies, though he risks losing his job, his home and even the woman he loves. In his debut novel, J.L. Torres captures the conflict and challenges experienced by Puerto Ricans returning to their "homeland."
**
From Booklist
Starred Review In Torres’ inspired debut, Rennie Falto discovers that all of his notions about home, family, and even citizenship no longer apply. Upon the sudden deaths of both his parents, the recent college graduate must accompany their remains to Puerto Rico, the land of their birth, but not his. As far as he’s concerned, he is an American, born to naturalized American citizens. Legal issues compel him to stay awhile, and he meets a beautiful older woman—a complete stranger—who claims to be his biological mother. Circumstances force him to apply for, and get, a teaching job at a small college on the island. And so the tension heightens. While his open-minded parents had always tried to instill in him a sense of pride in his cultural heritage, Rennie was so removed from it in his everyday life that on the island he is considered an alien, a “nuyorican.” Torres does capture the conflicts and challenges Puerto Ricans experience when returning to their homeland, but he reaches beyond the specific to the universal, illuminating the lives and feelings of any second-generation American in a similar situation. --Donna Chavez
Review
"The reader discovers a beautiful, troubled land and its citizens...suffering from a very real identity crisis. This is a good introduction to a cultural and political situation and to the post-colonial mindset of a people who were granted U.S. citizenship, but who do not enjoy all of its privileges."
--Judith Ortiz Cofer, author of Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood.
"An elegant, heartbreaking novel imbued with a love for what is lost and later found. The Puerto Rican migration has come full circle ... a land and its people are one and the same, no matter where one is standing."
--Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Bodega Dreams
"An inspired debut...Torres does capture the conflicts and challenges Puerto Ricans experience when returning to their homeland, but he reaches beyond the specific to the universal, illuminating the lives and feelings of any second-generation American in a similar situation."
--Booklist Starred Review
"I was a lucky soul who got to pre-read this book which explores the concepts of origins, family, nationhood and environmental crisis-- all wrapped in a love story. GREAT STUFF!"
--Elizabeth Cohen, author of The Hypothetical Girl.
"Torres has penned a tender but unflinching love/hate story about Puerto Rico as glimpsed through the eyes of Rene "Rennie" Falto, a Nuyorican (New York-Puerto Rican) who returns to his ancestral homeland to bury his parents, who died in a tragic accident. In The Accidental Native ... Puerto Rico is glimpsed in all its schizoid independence/statehood glory from Falto's insider/outside lens that is Torres' also."
--Robin Caudell, The Press-Republican.
"Themes of identity personal and national vibrate at the core of Jose Torres's debut novel, The Accidental Native."
--*Press Republican
*Torres...delivers a wonderful travelogue of the island. The reader gets to zoom up and down the autopista with Rennie taking in all the color and flavors of Puerto Rico’s cities, mountains, and beaches. I was happy to recognize spots such as Luquillo Beach and the mentions of the coqui frogs singing throughout the night made me want to return. But isn’t that what one wants when you experience a new book or a new landscape—to have it leave such a deep impression that you find yourself seeking it again?...I could tell in honoring his heritage, he is definitely leaving his mark.
--Sophfronia Scott, Gently Read Literature
"The encounter with his birth mother throws Rennie into a life-changing conflict where love and memory will intersect with Puerto Rico's reality." --*NBCLatino
"…Roberto Bolaño…felt that his children were his homeland. The dude in this book, however, feels he will find actualization by following his actual mother. So commences a roots trek that leads this young Nuyorican to a new life with snobs and squatters alike, and the unnerving rumor that the metaphorical cancer of America’s military presence on the island has resulted in a literal cancer in the people he meets…The Accidental Native suggests that if the metaphysical poet John Donne was right and no man is an island, that is in the end a tragedy that taunts at least some men."
--Roberto Ontiveros* of the San Antonio Current
From beginning to end, Torres keeps you guessing about Rennie’s past, present, and future. This aspect of the book keeps your interest as the mystery of his past unfolds and he must face a new culture, and meet the challenges of a new job and new relationships from a boss who dislikes him to an older girlfriend who wants commitment he is unsure of.
--At the Inkwell
Rennie Falto is a Puerto Rican character for the new millennium. His U.S. background is most evident in his musical taste and his total confusion with the political and gendered dynamics he encounters. For those of us exploring what it means to be a Puerto Rican, especially in the third-generation, Rennie offers a youthful character wholly different from the Piris and the Nildas. An English-dominant, college-educated, stateside born and raised Boricua, the U.S. is his home, and it’s Puerto Rico he needs to learn to adjust to. The Accidental Native represents a new phase of Puerto Rican literature, giving us a character that rebels against the usual and challenges what it means to be Puerto Rican, and the proscribed ways in which to be a Latino. It’s a new trend I’d like to see more of.
--Shakti Castro, Larespuesta
En esta ambiciosa historia, con dotes detectivescas y altas dosis de sarcasmo, Torres aborda temas escabrosos tales como los estragos de la política colonial y la posible relación entre el almacenamiento de armamento militar y la incidencia de cáncer en Puerto Rico. (Cualquier semejanza a la situación actual en la isla-municipio de Vieques no es mera coincidencia.) De igual forma, expone, con intensidad y picardía, el choque de los discursos identitarios que dominan el debate cultural.
--Yarisa Colon Torres, Cruce.
Description:
When Rennie's parents die in a freak accident, he does what they would have wanted and buries them in Puerto Rico, their homeland. There, he's shocked to discover that the woman who raised him was not his biological mother. A high-powered attorney, his birth mother Julia is determined to reclaim the son she gave up many years before.
Adrift, with no family in New York and haunted by memories, Rennie is swayed by Julia's constant pleading that he move to the island. A teaching job at a college in Puerto Rico decides it, and he finds himself flying "home" to a place and culture he knows only through his parents' recollections. Once there, he must deal with Julia's strong-willed nature, a department chair not thrilled to have a Nuyorican on staff, squatters living in the house he inherited, students frequently on strike and a lover anxious to settle down. Most disturbing is the rumor that numerous faculty and staff are dying from cancer because the campus, a former U.S. military base, is full of buried munitions.
Rennie soon finds himself working to expose the government's lies, though he risks losing his job, his home and even the woman he loves. In his debut novel, J.L. Torres captures the conflict and challenges experienced by Puerto Ricans returning to their "homeland."
**
From Booklist
Starred Review In Torres’ inspired debut, Rennie Falto discovers that all of his notions about home, family, and even citizenship no longer apply. Upon the sudden deaths of both his parents, the recent college graduate must accompany their remains to Puerto Rico, the land of their birth, but not his. As far as he’s concerned, he is an American, born to naturalized American citizens. Legal issues compel him to stay awhile, and he meets a beautiful older woman—a complete stranger—who claims to be his biological mother. Circumstances force him to apply for, and get, a teaching job at a small college on the island. And so the tension heightens. While his open-minded parents had always tried to instill in him a sense of pride in his cultural heritage, Rennie was so removed from it in his everyday life that on the island he is considered an alien, a “nuyorican.” Torres does capture the conflicts and challenges Puerto Ricans experience when returning to their homeland, but he reaches beyond the specific to the universal, illuminating the lives and feelings of any second-generation American in a similar situation. --Donna Chavez
Review
"The reader discovers a beautiful, troubled land and its citizens...suffering from a very real identity crisis. This is a good introduction to a cultural and political situation and to the post-colonial mindset of a people who were granted U.S. citizenship, but who do not enjoy all of its privileges."
--Judith Ortiz Cofer, author of Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood.
"An elegant, heartbreaking novel imbued with a love for what is lost and later found. The Puerto Rican migration has come full circle ... a land and its people are one and the same, no matter where one is standing."
--Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Bodega Dreams
"An inspired debut...Torres does capture the conflicts and challenges Puerto Ricans experience when returning to their homeland, but he reaches beyond the specific to the universal, illuminating the lives and feelings of any second-generation American in a similar situation."
--Booklist Starred Review
"I was a lucky soul who got to pre-read this book which explores the concepts of origins, family, nationhood and environmental crisis-- all wrapped in a love story. GREAT STUFF!"
--Elizabeth Cohen, author of The Hypothetical Girl.
"Torres has penned a tender but unflinching love/hate story about Puerto Rico as glimpsed through the eyes of Rene "Rennie" Falto, a Nuyorican (New York-Puerto Rican) who returns to his ancestral homeland to bury his parents, who died in a tragic accident. In The Accidental Native ... Puerto Rico is glimpsed in all its schizoid independence/statehood glory from Falto's insider/outside lens that is Torres' also."
--Robin Caudell, The Press-Republican.
"Themes of identity personal and national vibrate at the core of Jose Torres's debut novel, The Accidental Native."
--*Press Republican
*Torres...delivers a wonderful travelogue of the island. The reader gets to zoom up and down the autopista with Rennie taking in all the color and flavors of Puerto Rico’s cities, mountains, and beaches. I was happy to recognize spots such as Luquillo Beach and the mentions of the coqui frogs singing throughout the night made me want to return. But isn’t that what one wants when you experience a new book or a new landscape—to have it leave such a deep impression that you find yourself seeking it again?...I could tell in honoring his heritage, he is definitely leaving his mark.
--Sophfronia Scott, Gently Read Literature
"The encounter with his birth mother throws Rennie into a life-changing conflict where love and memory will intersect with Puerto Rico's reality." --*NBCLatino
"…Roberto Bolaño…felt that his children were his homeland. The dude in this book, however, feels he will find actualization by following his actual mother. So commences a roots trek that leads this young Nuyorican to a new life with snobs and squatters alike, and the unnerving rumor that the metaphorical cancer of America’s military presence on the island has resulted in a literal cancer in the people he meets…The Accidental Native suggests that if the metaphysical poet John Donne was right and no man is an island, that is in the end a tragedy that taunts at least some men."
--Roberto Ontiveros* of the San Antonio Current
From beginning to end, Torres keeps you guessing about Rennie’s past, present, and future. This aspect of the book keeps your interest as the mystery of his past unfolds and he must face a new culture, and meet the challenges of a new job and new relationships from a boss who dislikes him to an older girlfriend who wants commitment he is unsure of.
--At the Inkwell
Rennie Falto is a Puerto Rican character for the new millennium. His U.S. background is most evident in his musical taste and his total confusion with the political and gendered dynamics he encounters. For those of us exploring what it means to be a Puerto Rican, especially in the third-generation, Rennie offers a youthful character wholly different from the Piris and the Nildas. An English-dominant, college-educated, stateside born and raised Boricua, the U.S. is his home, and it’s Puerto Rico he needs to learn to adjust to. The Accidental Native represents a new phase of Puerto Rican literature, giving us a character that rebels against the usual and challenges what it means to be Puerto Rican, and the proscribed ways in which to be a Latino. It’s a new trend I’d like to see more of.
--Shakti Castro, Larespuesta
En esta ambiciosa historia, con dotes detectivescas y altas dosis de sarcasmo, Torres aborda temas escabrosos tales como los estragos de la política colonial y la posible relación entre el almacenamiento de armamento militar y la incidencia de cáncer en Puerto Rico. (Cualquier semejanza a la situación actual en la isla-municipio de Vieques no es mera coincidencia.) De igual forma, expone, con intensidad y picardía, el choque de los discursos identitarios que dominan el debate cultural.
--Yarisa Colon Torres, Cruce.