A new paperback edition of Julia Alvarez’s beloved story about family, identity, and first love.   Milly Kaufman is an ordinary American teenager living in Vermont—and then she meets Pablo, a new student at her high school. His exotic accent, strange fashion sense, and intense interest in Milly force her to confront her identity as an adopted child from Pablo’s native country. As their relationship grows, Milly decides to undertake a courageous journey to her homeland and, along the way, discovers the story of her birth is intertwined with the story of a country recovering from a brutal past.   Beautifully written by renowned author Julia Alvarez, Finding Miracles examines the emotional complexity of familial relationships and the miracles of everyday life.   “An outstanding YA novel.” — KLIATT “Complex multicultural characters and skillful depiction of Latino culture raise this readable novel, which is a school story, a family story, and a love story, to far above average.” — VOYA   “Written with immediacy and charm, there is accessibility to the very American Milly’s attitudes and ideas that will help readers accompany her on her journey of discovery and growth.” — Kirkus Reviews   “This is a deeply moving, but also pleasantly humorous, coming-of-age story with thoughtful infusions about human rights issues.” — SLJ Julia Alvarez is the award-winning author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies . Her highly acclaimed books for young readers include The Secret Footprints, A Gift of Gracias , the Tía Lola series, Finding Miracles , and Return to Sender . Alvarez has won numerous awards for her work, including the Pura Belpré and Américas awards for her children’s books, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. In 2013, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. She is currently a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College and, together with her husband, Bill Eichner, established Alta Gracia, a sustainable coffee farm/literacy center in the Dominican Republic. Visit her on the Web at juliaalvarez.com. I took the class where we wrote stories with Ms. Morris. It was a three-week elective we could do on the side with regular English class. I did it because, to be truthful, I needed the extra credit. I’ve always had big problems with writing, which I’m not going to go into here. I knew my English grade, a C, was rapidly gyrating into a D. So I signed up.   “Stories are how we put the pieces of our lives together,” Ms. Morris told us that first class. The way she talked, it was like stories could save your life. She was like a fanatic of literature, Ms. Morris. A lot of kids didn’t like her for that. But secretly, I admired her. She had something worth giving her life to. Except for saving my mom and dad and sister, Kate, and brother, Nate, and best friend, Em, and a few other people from a burning building, I didn’t have anything I could get that worked up about.   “Unless we put the pieces together we can get lost.” Ms. Morris sighed like she’d been there, done that. Ms. Morris wasn’t exactly old, maybe about Mom and Dad’s age. But with her wild, frizzy hair and her scarves and eye makeup, she seemed younger. She lived an hour away near the state university and drove a red pickup. Occasionally, she referred to her partner, and sometimes to her kid, and once to an ex-husband. It was hard to put all the pieces of her life together.   Ms. Morris had this exercise where we had to jot down a couple of details about ourselves. Then we had to write a story based on them.   “Nothing big,” she said to encourage us. “But they do have to be details that reveal something about your real self.”   “Huh?” a bunch of the guys in the back row grunted.   “Here’s what I mean,” Ms. Morris said, reading from her list. She always tried out the exercises she gave us. “The morning I was born, I had to be turned around three times. Headed in the wrong direction, I guess.” She looked up and grinned, sort of proud of herself. “Okay, here’s another one. When I was twelve, an X‑ray discovered that I had extra ‘wing bones’ on my shoulders.” Ms. Morris spread her arms as if she was ready to fly away.   The huh guys all shot a glance at each other like here we are in the Twilight Zone.   “So, class, a detail or two to convey the real you! Actually, this is a great exercise in self-knowledge!”   We all groaned. It was kind of mandatory when a teacher was this kindergarten-perky about an assignment.   I sat at my desk wondering what to write. My hands were itching already with this rash I always get. Since nothing else was coming, I decided to jot that down. But what came out was, “I have this allergy where my hands get red and itchy when my real self’s trying to tell me something.” For my second detail, I found myself writing, “My parents have a box in their bedroom we’ve onl