Crime, corruption, and colonialism–as well as compassion, survival, and dark humor–are woven into The Puerto Rico Trilogy, which consists of three separate character-driven novels that focus on the Caribbean island and its complex political and social relationship with the U.S.

Ulysses in San Juan, the concluding novel, relates the relationship between a Jewish concentration camp survivor and a Puerto Rican female drug addict. It takes the reader on a trip into the San Juan underworld, as well to other island sites to meet crooked and upright and poignant and colorful characters.

As the personal and the political interconnect, it is revealed that several of the trilogy’s characters have had their lives marked by such 20th Century historical turning points as the Spanish Civil War, the Holocaust, the Cuban Revolution, and the Vietnamese War.