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Winner of the NAACP Image Award, Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction

Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

From National Book Award-winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes the story of one Dominican American family told through the voices of its women

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.

Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.

A Best Book of 2023 from: Washington Post * Good Housekeeping * Real Simple * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * Time * NPR

Booklist Reviews

Acevedo, the thrice Odyssey-honored narrator for her books for youth, brings her words and voice to the adult audience with this rich tale that swirls around a family of Dominican American women, their histories, loves, powers, and bonds. As her mother, Flor, plans a living wake for herself, college professor Ona responds with a project of her own to commemorate the lives of the women in the Marte family: a collection of oral histories winding through the Bronx and Dominican Republic, through English and Spanish, that reveal the complexities inherent in any family. Acevedo narrates the bulk of the tale in her rich, fluid, rhythmic tones, but for transcripts of Ona's interviews with her cousins and aunts, she reads for Ona while bilingual voice actor Sixta Morel and spoken-word poet Danyeli Rodriguez del Orbe take turns reading for Ona's interview subjects. Morel's portions are warm and flow with a practiced sensibility, while Rodriguez Del Orbe brings her poet's cadence—by turns halting, impassioned, and guarded—to the narration. A Spanish-language audio of the title is planned for November release. Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

National Book Award—winning YA author Acevedo (Clap When You Land) narrates most of her adult fiction debut with bilingual fluency and mellifluous rhythms; she's briefly joined by Sixta Morel and Danyeli Rodriguez del Orbe, who perform five brief interludes. Character by memorable character, Acevedo unfolds the intertwined lives of a Dominican American family, about to gather for the wake of one of their own. Flor, the second Marte sister, who can see death before it arrives, insists there's no reason for urgency. She's just been inspired by a documentary about a living wake and wants to plan her own. Leading up to the magnificent event, Acevedo unspools glimpses into three generations: coldly controlling Mamá; kindly oldest sister Matilde; her philandering husband Rafa; truth-knowing third sister Pastora; privileged youngest sister Camila; and Pastora's daughter Yadi, who is considering her newly returned first love. Flor's daughter Ona—the only Marte to whom Acevedo grants first-person narration—serves as the family's anthropologist. That Ona's interviews with each of the four sisters (liltingly enlivened by Morel) and cousin Yadi (Rodriguez del Orbe's single, resolute reading) are not voiced by Acevedo cleverly bestows these women with agency over their stories. VERDICT Acevedo's choice to self-narrate her novel further amplifies her already remarkable voice.—Terry Hong