The Line of the Sun

Set in the 1950s and 1960s,The Line of the Sunmoves from a rural Puerto Rican village to a tough immigrant housing project in New Jersey, telling the story of a Hispanic family's struggle to become part of a new culture without relinquishing the old. At the story's center is Guzman, an almost mythic figure whose adventures and exile, salvation and return leave him a broken man but preserve his place in the heart and imagination of his niece, who is his secret biographer.

Judith Ortiz Cofer is a Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia.