Her voice is more powerful—and magical—than she ever imagined.
Consider these songs a mixtape, a disco de amor for the country I love.
May these songs find you, mis panas, wherever you are.
Because like me, you carry Venezuela in your heart.
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Along the azure Venezuelan coast, where cacao beans dry in the sun and political winds carry both danger and possibility, sixteen-year-old Luz Sánchez yearns for how life used to be. Milk and sing to her cows, go to school, help her family on the farm, repeat. After her older brother’s death, routine is the only thing keeping her upright. But everything is changing.
While Luz has learned to live with her epilepsy, the local bruja claims her seizures are something more—the ability to commune with the world of espíritus. Luz doesn't believe in brujería, yet whenever she sings, strange things keep happening. Animals respond in ways they shouldn’t, crowds go silent, and moments tip beyond her control.
At home, it's getting harder to make ends meet on their small dairy farm. With the government's new price controls on milk and one less farmhand to help, Luz's family is barely staying afloat. She's crushing hard on Abel, whose family runs a promising chocolate shop—but he has a girlfriend. And then there's the annoying new farmhand she's forced to train, who knows more about heavy metal than milking cows. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government grows more repressive: the military is everywhere, a popular TV station is being silenced, and daily life is a fight for survival.
When Abel invites Luz to his sister's beachside quinceañera in the beautiful town of Chuao—and offers a chance to help save her family's business—she discovers her voice is more powerful, and far more magical, than she ever imagined. But using it means stepping outside the routines that keep her safe. In a country where control is tightening everywhere, Luz must decide whether to stay quiet—or finally let herself be heard.
SING VENEZUELA is an 80,000-word contemporary YA novel with elements of magical realism and series potential. It will appeal to readers of Karina Sainz Borgo and Erika Sánchez—think a Venezuelan Like Water for Chocolate, where music takes the place of recipes.
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This novel was co-written by a husband-and-wife team who write under a shared pseudonym. Our work has been published in the Hispanic literary magazine Letralia, Tierra de Letras and Caracas Chronicles, the most respected English-language Venezuelan news publication.
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