Summer, 1934: Anne Dodge was raised by her old-money, New England Protestant father in the small coastal town of Warwick, Rhode Island. She has always been told that her Portuguese mother abandoned them when Anne was a small child, and died without ever contacting them again. After her mother¹s death, Anne learns that she has a half-sister, Maria Cristina, who was raised among Portuguese immigrants--and when Maria Christina comes ugly truths begin to surface about what really happened between her parents, catalyzing events that end in loss and rediscovery. 

Within the context of New Deal labor strikes and union busting, a hint of desperation pervades the town after five years of economic depression, and a dwindling white, pioneer-stock majority faces immigration that is inevitably changing the order of their world. Daughter of Providence is a beautifully written and moving debut novel by an important new voice in American fiction.