One Hot Summer Hardcover - 2002

From the publisher

During the span of a summer, anything can happen. Former lovers return, husbands lose all rationale, and family can suffocate a person more easily than the sweltering humidity of a late Florida afternoon.

Set in Miami Beach, "One Hot Summer" follows the life of Margarita Maria Santos Silva, a woman bent on making her own decisions in a family that seems to have the future, as well as the rules, neatly laid out for her. After the birth of her son, Margarita is at the end of taking a year off from the stressful legal career she worked so hard to earn. Margarita suddenly faces the daunting task of deciding whether she should go back to work or stay home and dutifully raise her two-year-old son -- the latter being the choice both her overachieving husband, Ariel, and old-fashioned family desperately want her to make.

But when her old law school boyfriend the ultrasuave and handsome Luther Simmonds, shows up out of nowhere, all hell breaks loose. Along with her newly awakened passion, Margarita again understands the empowering warmth of having Luther listen to "her" needs and desires. She now has twice as many critical decisions to make and only one hot summer in which to make them.

In a laugh-out-loud scenes that make Garcia-Aguilera a master of the comedic narrative, we watch Margartia as she transforms her loss of identity into the shape of her new, powerful self. Watching Margarita deal with her challenges is achingly funny. What's even more savory, and ultimately life-affirming, is how Margarita manages to navigate through career, family, and cultural conflicts while understanding that she can indeed live life on her own terms, and that compromise is the golden road that mostpeople quite often ignore.