Camino is a teenage girl living in the Dominican Republic with her aunt, who works as a healer. Her father, who lives in New York, comes to visit every summer, and Camino lives for those visits. Yet on the day his plane is to arrive and she waits for him at the airport, she learns that his plane has crashed.
Another teenage girl, Yahaira, lives in New York. Her father goes home to the Dominican Republic each summer, which causes a strain on his relationship with her mother. One morning she is called out of her class and told by her mother that her father’s plane crashed.
Both girls are grief-struck, devastated by the loss of their father. Camino has dreams of going to college in New York and studying medicine, and now isn’t even sure how she and her aunt will survive, especially as a dangerous man she has been protected from all this time circles closer.
Yahaira, who discovered a secret about her father before he died, feels guilty, angry, and deceived, yet doesn’t know how to live without her hero. She tries to push everyone away.
When the two girls learn of each other, it is a shocking discovery of a connection that wounds but might ultimately save them both.
Clap When You Land is poignant, luminous, and powerful. Acevedo imbues her words with such vivid imagery and raw emotion. It didn’t quite hit me as hard as I expected it to given the subject matter, but it still was a book that will stick with me. Acevedo's two earlier books, The Poet X and With the Fire on High, are master works.
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