Elizabeth Santiago

Elizabeth Santiago writes for young readers about Puerto Rican and Taíno history, inherited memory, and the ways family stories shape present choices. The Moonlit Vine follows fourteen-year-old Taína, known as Ty, as she learns that a line of Taíno women connects her life to a deeper history of survival and resistance. The 2023 Tu Books edition, from an imprint of Lee & Low Books, is intended for readers thirteen and older and includes illustrations by McKenzie Mayle. Its structure alternates Ty's contemporary story with historical chapters, allowing ancestral knowledge to influence the present without collapsing the two periods. Santiago's teacher's guide explains that she wrote the book to honor Taíno continuity and to challenge narratives that confine Indigenous Caribbean people to the distant past. That purpose gives the novel both a family-centered plot and a carefully researched cultural frame. The Moonlit Vine is therefore a coming-of-age story, a conversation between generations, and an invitation to examine whose histories are preserved, hidden, or recovered.