The Air You Breathe

More about the book

Dores, a skinny nine-year-old orphan, is working in the kitchen of a sugar plantation in 1930s Brazil when in walks a girl who changes everything. Graça, the spoiled daughter of a sugar baron, is clever, pretty, and thrillingly ill behaved. Born to wildly different worlds, Dores and Graça bond quickly over shared mischief, and then, more deeply, over music. One has a voice like a songbird; the other feels melodies in her soul and composes lyrics to match. Music becomes their shared passion, the only way out of the life to which each was born. But only one is destined to be a star.