“No Perfect Choice thrusts readers into the medical, moral, and ethical quagmire of America’s latest round of reproductive tyranny.”
— Martin J. Smith, Edgar Award-nominated author of four Memory Series psychological thrillers, Combustion, and 27 Knots
When the law decides your fate, survival becomes an act of defiance.
After a heart attack lands Alina Rodriguez in a Texas ER, she receives a second, unthinkable diagnosis: a non-viable, life-threatening pregnancy. With doctors unwilling to treat her, the clock ticks, and Ali is forced into a desperate search for care in a system where her life comes second.
But this isn’t Ali’s first impossible dilemma. Decades earlier, as a pregnant teen navigating faith, fear, and family fracture in suburban Chicago, she found quiet allies to help when she couldn’t trust those she loved. Now, as past and present collide, the hidden histories of her grandmother and aunt in pre-revolutionary Cuba simmer to the surface, revealing a legacy of silence, sacrifice, and resilience.
No Perfect Choice is a gripping, deeply human story of autonomy, inheritance, and the price women pay when doctors’ hands are tied.
Praise
“No Perfect Choice is part coming-of-age, part family saga that traces reproductive autonomy across three generations of women and two countries, from pre-revolutionary Cuba to a Texas ER. Méndez-Soto writes with the specificity and warmth of lived Cuban-American experience, and the result is a reckoning — one that asks what we inherit, and what we carry in silence to protect ourselves and the ones we love. A powerful debut.”
— Lisa Montanaro, author of the award-winning novel Everything We Thought Was True
“A timely, passionate, and intense feminist warning under the guise of readable commercial fiction.”
— Kirkus Review
“When Alina Rodriguez survives a heart attack only to discover she’s unexpectedly pregnant in post-Dobbs Texas, the crisis forces her to confront not only a life-threatening medical emergency but also the buried memories of her own teenage pregnancy, her Cuban immigrant upbringing, and decades of silence surrounding women’s bodies, sexuality, and choice. Moving between past and present with urgency and compassion, No Perfect Choice is a deeply human novel about autonomy, family, resilience, and the impossible decisions women are sometimes forced to make.”
— Achy Obejas, author of The Boy Kingdom/El reino de los varones, among many others, and translator for Rita Indiana’s Asmodeus
“We open page one of No Perfect Choice and drop right into crisis. Alina Rodriguez’s heart attack and surprise geriatric pregnancy collide in a devastating medical pileup, post-Dobbs in the state of Texas. Most of us have envisioned such a disaster—an unwanted, medically dangerous pregnancy with no chance of getting the needed abortion. Weaving between women past and present, the novel starkly reminds us that a woman’s body has always been a battlefield. That it still is.”
— Shelley Blanton-Stroud, author of An Unlikely Prospect
“Lilliana Mendez-Soto’s No Perfect Choice thrusts readers into the medical, moral, and ethical quagmire of America’s latest round of reproductive tyranny. In Alina Rodriguez, Mendez-Soto gives us an achingly human heroine trying to navigate an impossible labyrinth that she learns is nothing new in her Cuban-American family, but which ultimately may lead her to a cold dead end. This is one timely and compelling read.”
— Martin J. Smith, Edgar Award-nominated author of four Memory Series psychological thrillers, Combustion, and 27 Knots
No Perfect Choice will also be available as an audiobook
Alum of the Community of Writers Fiction Workshops.
Rooted & Written Fellow
San Francisco Writers Grotto Rooted & Written Fellow.
VONA Fellow
Nonfiction Fellow, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation
A Debut Decades in the Making
No Perfect Choice draws on Méndez-Soto’s lifetime of writing and lived experience to explore autonomy, family, memory, and resilience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lilliana Méndez-Soto
Lilliana Méndez-Soto is a first generation Cuban-American who was born and raised in Chicago, and makes her home in Northern California. She practiced clinical pharmacy for 35 years, and led writing groups in a health care environment using the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) method. When she isn’t writing, she can be found outdoors with her rescue dogs. Read More
Community of Writers Alum
Alum of the Community of Writers Fiction Workshops.
Rooted & Written Fellow
San Francisco Writers Grotto Rooted & Written Fellow.
VONA Fellow
Nonfiction Fellow, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation
A Debut Decades in the Making
No Perfect Choice draws on Méndez-Soto’s lifetime of writing and lived experience to explore autonomy, family, memory, and resilience.
