Boyet Hernandez is a small man with a big American dream when he arrives in New York in 2002, fresh out of fashion school in the Philippines. But on the brink of fame and fortune, there comes instead a knock on the door in the middle of the night: the flamboyant ex-Catholic is swept to America’s most notorious prison, administered a Qur’an and locked away indefinitely to discover his link to a terrorist plot. More about this book >

• HONOREE 5 Under 35 2014 >

  Selected by Amy Bloom >

  Amy Bloom

  

  Author of three novels, three collections of short stories, a children’s book and a collection of essay. She has been a nominee for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and numerous anthologies here and abroad. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, among many other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award for Fiction. Her best-selling novel, Away, was an epic story about a Russian immigrant. Her most recent and best-selling novel, Lucky Us, (Random House) came out in 2014. She lives in Connecticut and taught at Yale University for the last decade. She is now Wesleyan University’s Distinguished University Writer in Residence.