A Spy in the Struggle

Book excerpt: An Amazon Best of the Month Selection The Washington Post Featured Thriller That Will Have You On The Edge Of Your Seat Bustle’s Most Anticipated Reads for December Book Riot Featured Hispanic Heritage Month Book CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Books of Fall 2020 Novel Suspects Featured December New Release "A passionately felt stand-alone with an affecting personal story at its center." —The Washington Post Winner of the International Latino Book Award, Aya de Leon, returns with a thrilling and timely story of feminism, climate, and corporate justice—as one successful lawyer must decide whether to put everything on the line to right the deep inequities faced in one under-served Bay Area, California community. Since childhood, Yolanda Vance has forged her desire to escape poverty into a laser-like focus that took her through prep school and Harvard Law. So when her prestigious New York law firm is raided by the FBI, Yolanda turns in her corrupt bosses to save her career—and goes to work for the Bureau. Soon she's sent undercover at Red, Black, and Green—an African-American “extremist” activist group back in her California college town. They claim a biotech corporation fueled by Pentagon funding is exploiting the neighborhood. But Yolanda is determined to put this assignment in her win column, head back to corporate law, and regain her comfortable life... Until an unexpected romance opens her heart—and a suspicious death opens her eyes. Menacing dark money forces will do anything to bury Yolanda and the movement. Fueled by memories of who she once was—and what once really mattered most—how can she tell those who’ve come to trust her that she’s been spying? As the stakes escalate, and one misstep could cost her life, Yolanda will have to choose between betraying the cause of her people or invoking the wrath of the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency. “Part of a new wave of espionage fiction from authors of color and women, many of whom place emphasis on the disturbing nature of being forced to spy on one’s own.” —Crime Reads, Most Anticipated Books of Fall