Tell It to Me Singing: A Novel by Tita Ramirez

Mónica Campo is pregnant with her first child when, moments before being wheeled into emergency heart surgery, her mother confesses a long-held secret: Mónica’s father is not the man who raised her. But when her mother wakes up and begins having delusional episodes, Mónica doesn’t know what to believe—whether the confession was real or just a channeling of the telenovela her mother watches nightly.

In her despair, Mónica wants to speak with only one person: her ex-boyfriend of five years, Manny. She can’t help but worry, though, what this says about her relationship with her fiancé and father of her unborn child.

Mónica’s search for the truth leads her to a new understanding of the past—the early ’80s, when her parents arrived from Cuba on the famous Mariel boatlift, and the tumultuous ’70s, a decade after Castro’s takeover, when some people were still secretly fighting his regime—people like her mother and the man she claims is Mónica’s real father.