The Turkish Lover

The acclaimed author of When I Was Puerto Rican recounts her love affair with a possessive filmmaker seventeen years her senior in this coming-of-age memoir.

“Santiago is a born storyteller.” —New York Times Book Review

In the third episode of her entrancing trilogy, Esmerelda finally breaks out of the monumental struggle with her powerful mother, only to elope into the spell of an exotic love affair. Esmerelda’s relationship with “the Turk” is a passion that gradually becomes a prison and out of which she must emerge to become herself. The expansive humanity, earthy humor, and psychological courage that made Esmerelda’s first two books so successful are on full display again in The Turkish Lover.

“Tells the tale of a passionate love and self-liberation, while brilliantly recounting the life off an emerging writer on the brink of adulthood.” —Ms.

“Pragmatic, emotional, funny, upsetting, sympathetic, and thoroughly entertaining. . . . The book is a fine chronicle of that time in your life when growing up means having some growing pains, and independence comes at a price that’s high, but worth paying.” —Detroit Free Press

“Readers of Sandra Cisneros will embrace The Turkish Lover, an earthy, heartfelt tale of liberation, desperation, and the crippling grip of obsessive love.” —Booklist