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The Grand Paloma Resort

A Novel

Author Cleyvis Natera
Hardcover
$30.00 US
Ballantine Group | Ballantine Books
6-1/8"W x 9-1/4"H
On sale Aug 12, 2025 | 320 Pages | 9780593873267
Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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The Dominican Republic’s famed Grand Paloma Resort is the paradise of dreams. Here, you can have it all, and the staff is always eager to please—that is, until they are pushed to the brink.

Vida is a curandera, a local healer, who has been called to the resort to attend to a crisis. A young guest lies unconscious due to negligent resort childcare. Vida wants nothing to do with it, as she has her own unborn child to think about.

Laura, a mid-level manager at the Grand Paloma Resort, is forced to call Vida for help. She’s made it this far through sheer hard work. Her brainchild, which pairs platinum guests with a resort employee to attend to their every need, has been wildly successful. She’s mere weeks away from a promotion that will blaze a path off the resort, to a life of freedom and opportunity. If only her little sister, Elena, could get with the program.

Elena has tried her best to live up to her own ideals and her sister’s expectations; to escape the endless monotony of her life, she’s become increasingly dependent on pills and partying. As a babysitter at the resort, she’s at the mercy of guests who are only interested in having fun, cheating on each other, and getting a break from their screen-addicted kids. Now one of those kids is believed to be dead and it’s all her fault.

At a local beachfront watering hole, Elena runs into the child’s father. High and clueless, he offers her an obscene amount of money to give him private time with two young local girls. Elena pockets the cash and prays she’s gotten the girls out of harm’s way—until they disappear.

Over the course of seven days, The Grand Paloma Resort offers an unforgettable story of class, family, and community revolving around this cast of characters, that shows surviving paradise comes down to reckoning with long-held secrets and true acts of love.
© Beowulf Sheehan
Cleyvis Natera is the author of Neruda on the Park. She was born in the Dominican Republic, migrated to the United States at ten years old, and grew up in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Her writing has won awards and fellowships from PEN America, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,  The Kenyon Review’s Writers Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey. View titles by Cleyvis Natera

About

The Dominican Republic’s famed Grand Paloma Resort is the paradise of dreams. Here, you can have it all, and the staff is always eager to please—that is, until they are pushed to the brink.

Vida is a curandera, a local healer, who has been called to the resort to attend to a crisis. A young guest lies unconscious due to negligent resort childcare. Vida wants nothing to do with it, as she has her own unborn child to think about.

Laura, a mid-level manager at the Grand Paloma Resort, is forced to call Vida for help. She’s made it this far through sheer hard work. Her brainchild, which pairs platinum guests with a resort employee to attend to their every need, has been wildly successful. She’s mere weeks away from a promotion that will blaze a path off the resort, to a life of freedom and opportunity. If only her little sister, Elena, could get with the program.

Elena has tried her best to live up to her own ideals and her sister’s expectations; to escape the endless monotony of her life, she’s become increasingly dependent on pills and partying. As a babysitter at the resort, she’s at the mercy of guests who are only interested in having fun, cheating on each other, and getting a break from their screen-addicted kids. Now one of those kids is believed to be dead and it’s all her fault.

At a local beachfront watering hole, Elena runs into the child’s father. High and clueless, he offers her an obscene amount of money to give him private time with two young local girls. Elena pockets the cash and prays she’s gotten the girls out of harm’s way—until they disappear.

Over the course of seven days, The Grand Paloma Resort offers an unforgettable story of class, family, and community revolving around this cast of characters, that shows surviving paradise comes down to reckoning with long-held secrets and true acts of love.

Author

© Beowulf Sheehan
Cleyvis Natera is the author of Neruda on the Park. She was born in the Dominican Republic, migrated to the United States at ten years old, and grew up in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Her writing has won awards and fellowships from PEN America, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,  The Kenyon Review’s Writers Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey. View titles by Cleyvis Natera

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