Make An American Marriage your great summer read. President Barack Obama did. He recommends Tayari Jones' "moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African American couple."

Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. Her work as a novelist, poet, and essayist has garnered wide recognition, including the 2013 National Medal of Arts. Her books include How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies—a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read Selection—Yo!, Something to Declare, In the Name of Salome, Saving theWorld, A Wedding in Haiti, and The Woman I Kept to Myself.