A Spy in the Struggle: A Riveting Must-Read Novel of Suspense

Aya de León

Dec 2020 · Dafina

About this ebook

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
 

Ratings and reviews

It was a A Good Mystery. I really enjoyed the mystery parts of this book. The title sure sums it up well. Yolanda had a tough case, being the spy at RBG (on orders of the FBI) even though she is a lawyer and a rookie agent. There is more than meets the eye though and there are major cover ups going on that need to be figured out. This case opens up Yolanda's eyes to truths and parts of life that she had avoided in the pursuit of security and success and I enjoyed the journey though I think the romance bits were not needed in such blatant detail as it detracted (at least for me) from the rest of the very interesting story. I liked Yolanda as a character who was strong and able to stand for the right thing, even when she is being shot at and can still land on her feet. Her and Jimmy are cute too. I think this was a good book and if the author writes more mysteries then I would probably read them.

Yolanda Vance is a young African American recently graduated lawyer. Yolanda has had to single-mindedly strive and achieve to survive in a world that has left her essentially orphaned. In her first job as an attorney at a prestigious corporate New York law firm, she is asked to shred documents in the middle of a raid by the FBI. The firm is guilty of securities fraud and Yolanda does the right thing and becomes a whistleblower. She is offered a position with the FBI, which she thinks will be a desk job. To her surprise, Yolanda is sent undercover to infiltrate an eco- and social justice activist group in California, who are taking on a large energy corporation with a defense contract. The activist group is seen as a threat by the FBI, but Yolanda quickly realizes that all is not that it seems and begins to question who the real criminals are. Yolanda starts as a narrow, focused and, in some ways, naive character who grows and empowers herself throughout the story. A Spy in the Struggle explores a lot of interesting and relevant issues such as how racial, community, environmental and social justice all intersect. Like Yolanda, we, as readers, are led to contemplate and question what we see in our world and investigate what is occurring beneath the surface.

thriller, multicultural, politics, social-issues, socioeconomics, dishonest-business-practices, self-worth-issues***** A driven woman lawyer with a multicultural history and heritage winds up working for the FBI and gets transferred to the iffy neighborhood where she went to high school (before college and Harvard Law) on the FBI's agenda. She is there in her first (pretty much involuntary) undercover assignment with an aggressive but law minding group of Black students who want to get justice, especially from a dishonest pseudo-ecological business that does more than the usual amount of lying and fooling the public, government, and NGOs. Throughout this experience she comes to face and evaluate her past, her goals, and her personal identity. She also comes to a personal closeness with a man from her past. I don't want to go into more detail because I want you to READ IT. I requested and received a free ebook copy from Kensington Books via NetGalley. Thank you!

About the author

Aya De León is a writer, activist, educator, spoken word poet and author of the award-winning Justice Hustlers series. The Director of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, she teaches poetry and spoken word at UC Berkeley and is an alumna of Cave Canem, VONA and Harvard University. She is a winner of the International Latino Book Award and a two-time winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and her extensive writing credits include Guernica, Essence, Ebony, The Huffington Post, VICE, Ploughshares, Woman’s Day and Bitch magazine, among many other websites and publications. De León first came to national attention as a spoken word artist in the underground poetry scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a hip-hop theater artist. She lives in San Francisco and can be found online at www.AyaDeLeon.com.