Banana Heart Summer Book

In her lush, luminous debut novel, Merlinda Bobis creates a dazzling feast for all the senses. Richly imagined, gloriously written, Banana Heart Summer is an incandescent tale of food, family, and longing—at once a love letter to mothers and daughters and a lively celebration of friendship and community.

Twelve-year-old Nenita is hungry for everything: food, love, life. Growing up with five sisters and brothers, she searches for happiness in the magical smell of the deep-frying bananas of Nana Dora, who first tells Nenita the myth of the banana heart; in the tantalizing scent of Manolito, the heartthrob of Nenita and her friends; in the pungent aromas of the dishes she prepares for the most beautiful woman on Remedios Street. To Nenita, food is synonymous with love—the love she yearns to receive from her disappointed mother. But in this summer of broken hearts, new friendships, secrets, and discoveries, change will be as sudden and explosive as the monsoon that marks the end of the sweltering heat—and transforms Nenita’s young life in ways she could never imagine.

Publishers Weekly

Poet Bobis serves up compassion and tenderness in generous portions in her fiction debut. Twelve-year-old Nenita is the first of six children born to her destitute parents in a Filipino village. Hungry and abused by her overwhelmed mother, Nenita drops out of school one summer in the hopes of earning enough money to support the growing family. Hired as the house girl of her well-to-do neighbors, the Valenzuelas, she befriends her mistress, the beautiful Señorita VV. The entire village experiences profound change during that sweltering summer, mirroring Nenita's coming-of-age. Nenita's passion for food sustains her through difficulties of all sorts, and she relishes each morsel and taste as a treasured gift, even as she faces continued difficulty. (May)

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