A Girl Named Nina

Fiction book

The Project

This novel is an emotional story based on the author’s own childhood. It includes some difficult content, with the young protagonist witnessing (and experiencing) traumatic events. As I edited the manuscript, I remained sensitive to these facts and aimed to strike a respectful balance between truth and fiction. The final work was well-received: the International Latino Book Awards honored Nina, and Penn State University Berks Campus included the book in their freshman curriculum.

About the Book

Nina has a dream… but first she must survive childhood.

Based on a true story, A Girl Named Nina paints a vivid portrait of life in 1960s Brooklyn. Nina grows up in a tenement with Puerto Rican parents who came to America seeking a better life. Her father adores and protects her, teaches her to read, and encourages the many gifts he sees within her. Her mother is nurturing in her own way, as she struggles quietly with her own difficult past.

Keenly aware of her surroundings from a very young age, Nina learns about the joys of childhood from a fourth-floor windowsill in her parents’ apartment. Still too young to jump rope and play stick ball with children on the busy street below, she witnesses life from within the halls of her building — including physical and sexual abuse — but tells no one what she has seen.

For Nina, the joys of coming of age are tempered with life’s many harsh realities: her parents’ separation, physical abuse, a friend’s drug use, her best friend’s murder, and the poverty that surrounds them all. Yet her spirit remains undaunted. Nina will not abandon her dream — her lifelong desire to become a doctor and rise above the hardships she has known, so that she can help guide others to a brighter future.