THE GHOSTS OF ROSE HILL

A magical realist romance told in verse explores the many transitions of life: from homelands to new homes, from childhood to adulthood, from life to death and back again.

The daughter of two immigrant legacies, Ilana Lopez knows what it is to live with ghosts of the past. On her mother’s side, there is a 500-year-long Jewish journey from Spain to Cuba to Miami Beach, and on her father’s side, a flight from 20th-century totalitarianism in the former Czechoslovakia. It’s the phantom of her family’s struggles that sees her exiled to Prague the summer of her 16th year: Separating Ilana from her friends and her beloved violin, her parents hope she will turn her attention to preparing for a stable, successful, American future rather than dreams of music. In Prague, she stays with her wild Aunt Žofie and stumbles upon a long-abandoned Jewish cemetery on the hill behind her house. Lonely and longing for understanding, Ilana learns about the heavy Jewish history of Prague as the ghost of a blue-eyed boy with dark curls wends his way into her beating heart. The past is alive in Ilana’s Prague, and it’s alive in this story that combines modern adolescent concerns, magical realism, and religious themes in pristine verse. An ode to the Diaspora and to the many folktales and myths populating Ilana’s mixed heritage, Romero’s luscious work dives into dark, painful caverns and emerges in sprays of enthralling hope.

A must-read for lost souls everywhere.