The Review

I have never been a “theater kid”; but I have always loved musical theater. As a patron to the arts, I have had season tickets to my local theater for four years in a row. There’s something magical about how musicals manage to hold up a mirror to our fears, our hopes, our heartbreak, and our grit with uncanny precision. For example, around this time last year, I saw Les Mis again, but while it was an enjoyable musical when I was a teenager, this time I cried harder than I ever had in “I Dreamed a Dream.” I felt stalled in my life; I hit all the milestones that were expected of me – got a good job, bought my own home, married my college sweetheart – but I still felt so empty inside. And because of that, I gravitated toward this novel as I loved the idea of a hopeful story of a young woman from the Heights stumbling into her big break.

My Train Leaves at Three, however, is NOT a hopeful story, just one with a lot of heart. The novel is told in the first-person perspective of Xiomara, an Afro-Latina singer and actress whose life has stalled out in the wake of her sister Nena’s sudden death. Xiomara drops out of her first Broadway show, Dreamgirls, ghosts her agent, and stops performing solos at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, where she earns the bulk of her income. Nearly thirty and living in a cramped apartment with her ultra-Catholic Puerto Rican mother, Xiomara realizes that it may be time to start moving on with her life. When a once-in-a-lifetime audition for hotshot director Manny Santos falls into her lap, it feels like the universe finally tossing her a lifeline. Unfortunately, not everything is as it seems as Xiomara comes face-to-face with the ugliest side of chasing a dream.

What I loved about Xiomara is that she is a deeply flawed protagonist – half from circumstance, half from her own decisions. You find yourself rooting for her with your whole chest, even as you are simultaneously screaming at her for self-sabotaging again. I respect Guerrero for sticking to her guns and refusing to sand Xiomara down into someone more “likeable” and instead gives us someone raw, bruised, impulsive and painfully…human. As I most of you know, I will always champion characters who feel real, even when they’re messy, and Xiomara is exactly that. She is so worn down from her grief that she barely registers when she’s taken advantage of, manipulated, r**** by a coworker, and continually abused by the man who is would be responsible for her big break. Guerrero writes grief not as a poetic wound but as an all-consuming undertow, the kind that convinces you that harm is what you deserve.

And yet, despite all of it, Xiomara ultimately chooses herself. It isn’t a triumphant Broadway finale, but a deeply earned decision to stop shrinking her life around her pain and start stepping toward a future she deserves. Watching Xiomara pull herself upright, even imperfectly, is its own emotional payoff.

Overall, My Train Leaves at Three is a powerful debut that I am very glad I took the time to pick up. It reminded me of I Will Blossom Anyway in all the best ways; particularly in how it treats womanhood at thirty as a beginning, not an ending.

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Short Review (AKA TLDR)

I gravitated toward this novel as I loved the idea of a hopeful story of a young woman from the Heights stumbling into her big break. My Train Leaves at Three, however, is NOT a hopeful story: just one with a lot of heart. The novel is told in the first-person perspective of Xiomara, an Afro-Latina singer and actress whose life has stalled out in the wake of her sister Nena’s sudden death. What I loved about Xiomara is that she is a deeply flawed protagonist – half from circumstance, half from her own decisions. You find yourself rooting for her with your whole chest, even as you are simultaneously screaming at her for self-sabotaging again. She is so worn down from her grief that she barely registers when she’s taken advantage of, manipulated, r**** by a coworker, and continually abused by the man who is would be responsible for her big break. Guerrero writes grief not as a poetic wound but as an all-consuming undertow, the kind that convinces you that harm is what you deserve.

And yet, despite all of it, Xiomara ultimately chooses herself. It isn’t a triumphant Broadway finale, but a deeply earned decision to stop shrinking her life around her pain and start stepping toward a future she deserves. Watching Xiomara pull herself upright, even imperfectly, is its own emotional payoff. Overall, My Train Leaves at Three is a powerful debut that I am very glad I took the time to pick up. It reminded me of I Will Blossom Anyway in all the best ways; particularly in how it treats womanhood at thirty as a beginning, not an ending.