Synopsis:

Just before her father's sudden death, Cuban-American artist Veronica Gonzalez is offered her first gallery exhibit, a real chance to break into the art world. Torn between the need to mourn and the pressure to create new artwork, Veronica is propelled into a fever-dream of productivity and grief, amidst memories of her tumultuous relationship with her colorful but infuriating Cuban émigré father, a volatile man of outsize appetites and passions who never stopped longing for his homeland. Praised by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka for its "lyrical pace and texture," WHITE LIGHT maps a young woman's struggle to distill her grief, rage, and love onto the canvas.

Praise for White Light:

“This first novel by Vanessa Garcia, the 2009 runner-up for the Rolex Mentor/Protégé Initiative for Literature, has indirectly rewarded that project in its world-wide search for fresh talent in the arts. A subtly woven network of relationships, it seduces with its lyrical pace and texture, tender and poignant, yet unsentimental. An artiste’s ‘walk in the woods’ that gently takes the reader by the hand.”

- Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate, Author of You Must Set Forth at Dawn

“White Light is a wonderfully generous creation, including a myriad of worlds while never blurring the firm line with which the author is always in control. The world of visual arts, of a Cuban American daughter and her difficult father, of food – its joys and terrors – of a young woman’s trying to navigate her way in a world that offers her simultaneously too few and too many possibilities. It is a throbbingly original achievement.”

- Mary Gordon, author of The Love of My Youth and Spending.

“Vanessa Garcia’s brilliant first novel is a fresh contribution to the American portrait of an artist, following a young Cuban-American woman through a journey of personal disaster juxtaposed against professional success. White Light illuminates the complex assimilation of past into present, of heritage into culture, of life into the sort of art that is lasting, meaningful and necessary.”

- A. Manette Ansay, author of Vinegar Hill and Blue Water

“Many-tongued and of mixed-media, White Light is a novel as much about losing a father as about constructing a self through art – and as vibrant for its intelligence as for its emotions, colors, and pure passion.”

- Jane Alison, author of Sisters Antipodes

"The novel weaves the lyrical and prosaic to create a rich narrative tapestry. Garcia, in her very first book, has crafted a wholly distinct voice that's fully formed."

- Neil Vazquez, The Miami New Times

"...a relentless engine, told in rich, smart prose and lucid detail -equal parts elegy and portrait of an artist... A lush, vibrant portrayal of the creative process, a daughter's love, and the unstoppable maelstrom of grief."

- Kirkus Review (Starred Review)

Awards for White Light

International Latino Book Award Winner, Best Popular Fiction, 2016
See more here:
Latino Book Awards

White Light Included in Following Reading Lists/Book Clubs

National Latino Book Club Selection
September 2016
Read More »
Listen to audio podcast of teleconference: Click Here »

30 Women Novelists You Should Know #30: Vanessa Garcia
By Lynn Canter
January 9, 2016
Read More »

2016 Top Ten
"New" Latino Authors to Watch (and Read)
List by LatinoStories.com, The Credible Source for Latino Literature
Read More Click Here
Read More »

NPR'S Best Books of 2015
Book Club Ideas, Family Matters, Seriously Good Writing, Realistic Fiction, For Art Lovers
Recommended by Carmen Maria Machado, book critic
Read More Click Here
Read More »

54 Kickass Novels of 2015
First Lines From 54 Novels by People of Color in 2015
By Navdeep Singh Dhillon
The Storytelling Papa
December 24, 2015
Read More »

Al Dia's Best Books of 2015
By Al Dia News Staff
Recommended by Sabrina Vourvoulias
December 23, 2015
Read More Click Here
Read More »

15 Worthwhile Books You Might Have Missed in 2015
Flavorwire's End of Year Booklist
By Sarah Seltzer and Jonathon Sturgeon
December 7, 2015
Read More Click Here
Read More »

NBC LATINO
Summer Reading List: 9 Great New Books By Latino Authors
List by Rigoberto Gonzalez
NBC Latino
July 13, 2015
Read More »

The Latina Book Club
Book of the Month: July, 2015
Read More »

The 'Not New York Times Summer Reading List'
By Sabrina Vourvoullas
Al Día
May 29, 2015
Read More »

Reviews for White Light:

A Coming of Age for Cuban American Literature
By Susannah Rodriguez Drissi
Cuba Counterpoints: Public Scholarship About a Changing Cuba
Cubacounterpoints.com
December 3, 2015
Read More Here

Ms. Hen Reviews White Light
By Shannon O'Connor
Ms Hen Reviews Things, November 20, 2015
Read More Here

Paula Lee on White Light
The Book Wheel Presents
#30Authors
30 Authors, 30 Books, 30 Days
By Paula Lee
Eclectic Bookworms Book Blog, Sept. 21, 2015
Read More Here

Review: "White Light" by Vanessa Garcia
By Laura Albritton
Miami Herald, Sept. 19, 2015
Read More Here

Kirkus Review
Summer 2015
Read review here

The Crown (a short story)
Storgy
February 4, 2018
For more info click here

Skin (a short story)
Southern Humanities Review
Vol. 50 No. 3&4
2016
For more info click here

Patty & Lorrie (short story)
i think it's in my head (exhibition catalog)
Girls' Club Art Collection and Augusto Mendoza
2013/2014
For more info click here

Roadtrip; Key West (Two Poems)
Through a Distant Lens: Travel Poems
An Anthology
Washington: Write Wing Publishing, 2014
ISBN: 9781495933424
To Purchase through Amazon click here.

Four Legged Flamingos (Short Story)
Intro to catalog for photography show
Francie Bishop Good: Not On Allen Street
@Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, 2013
Book Design by hellogusto.com
Printed by creativecreative.com

Sticks & Stones (Poetry)
Shady Side Review, 1st Issue [The Whirligig Installment], Fall 2009
www.shadysidereview.com

Canopies (Poetry)
Damselfly Press, Fifth Issue, Oct. 2008
Click Here to Read
http://damselflypress.net/