“The circle of myth, history, longing, and grief in Song of the Water Saints will envelop the reader as it does the lives of Nelly Rosario’s beautifully realized characters.”
—Maureen Howard, author of A Lover’s Almanac

Poetic, transporting, and heartbreaking, this debut novel traces the lives of three generations of courageous Dominican women.

First there is Graciela: a young girl rebelling against the strictures of her poor, rural life in the Dominican Republic in the early 1900s, she searches for her true destiny even as it lures her away from her husband and baby daughter. . . . Then there is Mercedes, passionately devoted to the Church, who rears herself after the death of her beloved stepfather, eventually marrying and moving with her husband to New York City, where she will bring up her granddaughter. . . . Coming of age in the freewheeling 1990s—and bringing the story full circle—Leila has without a doubt inherited the restless genes of great-grandmother Graciela. . . .

The intimate details of life in New York and the Dominican Republic, the broad strokes of history, the subtleties of familial connection amid changing notions of home and obligation—all are rendered with grace and gritty realism in this remarkably accomplished novel.