History-making hurricanes spin at the heart of these two debut novels. In The Last Karankawas, Kimberly Garza welcomes you to Fish Village, an off-the-beaten-path Galveston neighborhood populated by Mexican and Filipino American families. Carly Castillo has long pondered leaving Fish Village for a new life, and with news of Hurricane Ike gathering steam offshore, her whole neighborhood now faces a similar question: hunker down or flee? In Xochitl Gonzales’s Olga Dies Dreaming, a highbrow New York wedding planner seeks love, but when Hurricane Maria devastates Puerto Rico and sends Olga’s activist mother back into her and her congressman brothers’ life, buried family secrets and new strife—both personal and political—rise to the surface.

Moderator: Jill Meyers, editorial director of the imprint A Strange Object, part of Deep Vellum PublishingKimberly Garza, Xochitl Gonzalez, The Last Karankawas, Olga Dies Dreaming