Bad angel

Set in one of New York City's toughest neighborhoods, Bad Angel is the hard-hitting and heartbreaking story of a Dominican-American teenage mother, Bianca Diaz, struggling to see past the hopelessness of her situation to make the right decisions for herself and her baby daughter.

Told in shifting first-person voices that ring with truth and the poetry of the streets, the novel offers a variety of memorable characters. There's Teresa, Bianca's mother, a deeply religious woman who has sacrificed much to keep her family together, but finally comes to the painful conclusion that she must break it apart in order to save its individual members.

Bianca's friend Roberto is worn down by the violence that surrounds him, by the "dead young faces lying in the coffin, eyes that seen no more'n eighteen years of life closed forever..." and dreams of a better life for himself and Bianca. But it is Bianca's voice - full of sharp humor and edgy teenage bravado that barely covers the confusion and aching loneliness underneath - that is the most arresting of all, a voice that touches the heart and shows us something we need to see.