The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez

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Here’s another excellent book that I finished this month. In The World in Half Miraflores (Mira) sets out to find her father. She’s always known that she was the result of an affair that her mother had while her husband was stationed in Panama. Her mother didn’t talk about him much and all her life Mira just assumed that her father didn’t want to know her. But while trying to help her mother find some papers, Mira finds letters that her father wrote to her mother after she came back to the United States. Those letters tell a different story. So Mira goes to Panama, without her mother’s knowledge, to find him. While there, she meets Danilo who helps her with her search for her father and herself. All in all, a great story.

Here is one of my favorite quotes. I read an ARC (advanced reading copy), so this might not be exactly how this passage appears in the final version of the book, but I think it gives you a good idea of the author’s voice:

“Some people are true adventurers. But many more are adventurers by circumstance, adventurous only because their goals require them to be.They pull on the mask of daring because doing so is the only way to get to where they are going. And sometimes the mask becomes them, and by the end of their journey, the true adventurer who has lain dormant in their soul ignites and takes hold. And sometimes the mask is still just that, an outer shell, and the inner person remains unchanged. It’s hard to know all the time which is which and who you are. It’s hard to know until the end.” (p. 30)