Combining the haunting power of Toni Morrison’s Beloved with the evocative atmosphere of Philippa Gregory’s A Respectable Trade, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s groundbreaking novel illuminates a little discussed aspect of history—the Puerto Rican Atlantic Slave Trade—witnessed through the experiences of Pola, an African captive used as a breeder to produce more slaves
 
“A new classic of Caribbean literature.”—Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban
 
“A Woman of Endurance should be taught as both history and literature of las Americas; it cements Llanos-Figueroa as an urgent and critical voice for our times.”—Marisel Vera, author of The Taste of Sugar
 
A Woman of Endurance is a novel about the journey of Pola, an enslaved African woman on a sugar cane plantation in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico. After an attempted escape from a world of slave breeding and a brutal beating, Pola awakens to a new plantation, Hacienda las Mercedes. Here, she becomes immersed in the nuanced, complex, and supportive world of a community in which she learns to recognize and embrace the many faces of love—a mother’s love, a daughter’s love, a sister’s love, a love of community, and finally the self-love that she must experience before she can offer herself to another.
 
A Woman of Endurance is not a tale of defeat but rather one of survival, regeneration, and reclamation of common humanity. It illuminates the strength and endurance of an enslaved people who, though held captive, retain the full essence, both good and evil, of the human condition. Ultimately, this is a novel of healing and the triumph of the human spirit under the most brutal of circumstances.