When star high school athlete Kenny Romero treks from 1980s upper Manhattan to his summer job at a dairy farm in upstate New York, he leaves behind a family plagued with secrets. Yunqué's (No Matter How Much You Promise
...) nicely turned fourth novel puts the Catholic, Irish– Puerto Rican Kenny in the fields: tending cows, taking in the landscape and frolicking with blonde Lutheran girlfriend Claudia. Meanwhile, Kenny's father and maternal uncle, crooked cops, get into deep trouble; his mother (née Boyle) contemplates a painful decision; and his maternal grandmother clutches the keys to the family history (and has some skeletons of her own). When a pregnant cow trails off into the woods one night and Kenny embarks on a dangerous search, a family already fraying at the seams unravels. Yunqué writes with grace, vividly evoking second-generation New York City Irish and Puerto Rican–American life, contrasting its tight-knit urban world with the bucolic calm of the country. Although the final chapter abruptly delivers a too-neat conclusion, Yunqué concentrates on the intertwined Boyle-Romero relationships (where the men call one another Boylgado or O'Romer) fruitfully, and the whole coalesces into a moving family portrait. (Oct.)
