Greenwich Reads Together

Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding  the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico’ history, Olga Dies Dreaming, is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American Dream – all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.

It’s 2017, and Olga & her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner to Manhattan’s power brokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors, things are far less rosy. Olga’s and Prieto’s mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.

Xochitl Gonzalez has an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ workshop where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Prize in Fiction. She was the winner of the 2019 Disquiet Literary Prize and her work has been published in Bustle, Vogue and The Cut. She is a contributor to The Atlantic, where her weekly newsletter “Brooklyn Everywhere” explores the gentrification of people and places. Her New York Times bestselling debut novel Olga Dies Dreaming was published in January 2022. Prior to beginning her MFA, Xochitl was an entrepreneur and strategic consultant for 15 years.  She serves on the Board of the Lower East Side Girls Club.  A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, she received her B.A. in Fine Arts from Brown University.