A father, a friend, and a favorite book help a teen boy understand love and loss in this moving and vivid YA novel in verse.

 

Have you ever encountered a book that KO’d you, Iron Mike Tyson style? One that hit you square in the face and heart like some abracadabra casting a hex from an unknown planet?

 

For sixteen-year-old poet and b-baller Marcos Cadena, that book is the beat-up copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude he finds among his late father’s possessions after Papi is killed in an accident.

 

Marcos’ papi has always loomed large in his eyes. So, when Marcos travels to his parents’ childhood home of Cartagena, Colombia to spread Papi’s ashes, he brings his father’s book with him, convinced that Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece holds the key to understanding Papi’s life and accepting his death.

 

In Cartagena, Marcos befriends eighteen-year-old Camilo, a taxi driver and fellow García Márquez fan who appoints himself Marcos’ unofficial tour guide. Together, the two boys explore the landscape of Cartagena, from the picturesque streets of Old Town to the poor neighborhood where Camilo grew up. But when Camilo reveals a troubling secret from his past, Marcos must ask himself whether everyone deserves a second chance.

 

Woven through with themes of friendship, family, and forgiveness, this poignant novel in verse is also a love letter to Colombia and to the books of Gabriel García Márquez.

 

“Author Juan Vidal has done the impossible: Crafted a touching exploration of grief with Colombia and the legendary Gabriel Garcia Marquez as his guide. Poetic and raw, readers will fall for the basketball-loving romantic Marcus. A Second Chance on Earth marks Vidal’s debut as a defining new literary force to be reckoned with.”—Lilliam Rivera, award-winning author of Never Look Back