It is 1957 in Marianao, a suburb of Havana. Adela Santiago is 13 years old and lives in a small blue house with her mother, father, brother, and grandfather. And yet something is amiss. The students on her street are disappearing. Not only that but her parents' marriage seems to be disintegrating and her cousin is caught up in a bombing at the Hotel Nacional. Welcome to a world where a revolution is brewing. Welcome to Cuba.

An insight into what it is like to be young when bad things happen and it is not your fault.

Viviana Prado-Núñez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in a hospital with a 4.0 Google review rating and a view of the ocean. She has never seen Star Wars, eaten a grasshopper, or fallen in love, though she hopes to do all three of those things in the future. Her writing experience includes attendance of a Fiction Seminar at Brown University and the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, as well as previous publication in The Best Teen Writing of 2014, Synergy, and 4×4 Magazine. She is currently a freshman at Columbia University majoring in Creative Writing. The Art of White Roses is her first book. She is a finalist for the 2017 Burt Award for Caribbean Literature.