Agent: Alyssa Eisner Henkin, Trident Media Group. I believe in peace, love, and flower power,” explains the tutor sent to work with Ruthie), but Behar successfully juggles several engaging plot threads, and Ruthie’s complicated relationship with her mother, given the demands of her care, is especially compelling. Some dialogue can ring false (“I am a bit of a hippie. Readers will get a powerful sense of the historical setting through Ruthie’s narration, but the novel is perhaps defined even more by her family’s status as immigrants and by its memorable multicultural cast. LUCKY BROKEN GIRL by Ruth Behar RELEASE DATE: ApIn the 1960s, Ruthie Mizrahi, a young Jewish Cuban immigrant to New York City, spends nearly a year observing her family and friends from her bed.

However, a car accident leaves Ruthie so severely injured that she spends almost a year sequestered in her room in a body cast (“My bed is my island my bed is my prison my bed is my home”). The story begins with Ruthie Mizrahi moving up from the “dumb class” (where she learned English) to the “regular fifth grade class” at her school in New York City. She also struggles with intense fear when it is time to begin using crutches and descend the six flights of stairs in her apartment.Set in 1966, this strongly sketched novel, adult author Behar’s first for children, focuses on a 10-year-old Cuban immigrant whose injury forces a prolonged convalescence and rehabilitation. Ruthie learns the details of the accident and struggles with hatred for the boy who caused it, eventually realizing she can forgive him. As Ruthie heals, moving from a body cast to just one leg, but still bedridden, her world opens up again when her father gives her a typewriter and she can now record people's stories. Chicho brightens Ruthie's small world, literally and figuratively, moving her bed so that she can see out the window and bringing her paints and introducing her to Frida Kahlo, telling her she is the guardian saint of wounded artists. When Ramu's family experiences a tragedy that sends them back to India, Chicho, an immigrant from Mexico, moves into their apartment and befriends Ruthie. Ruth Behar, the Pura Belpré Awardwinning author of Lucky Broken Girl, was born in Havana, Cuba, grew up in New York, and has also lived in Spain and Mexico.

She also begins collecting stories, starting with her Jewban grandparents, learning of her grandmother's escape from Poland during World War II, then her escape from Castro's Communism. Ruth begins writing letters, first to Ramu, then God, then, after he sneaks a visit and gives her a pendant that is special to him, letters to Shiva as well.

Lucky Broken Girl by Ruth Behar