‘The Grand Paloma Resort’ Author Cleyvis Natera Has Us in a Grip

By Amaris Castillo

Cleyvis Natera latches onto readers from the very first line of her forthcoming novel, The Grand Paloma Resort. “The tourist child’s mud-streaked body had become heavy and sweat made her slippery in Elena’s arms,” writes the author. The girl is believed dead, and the stakes cannot be higher for Elena, a teenaged worker charged with babysitting the child at The Grand Paloma Resort, a lush and all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic. 

Once inside the casita she resides in on the property, Elena frantically calls her older sister Laura, who helps manage the resort. Laura, who has risen through the ranks at The Grand Paloma Resort through hard work and relentless dedication to guests, is weeks away from a promotion that would finally get her and her little sister far away from DR, and from their troubled home life. Because of this accident, that path is now at great risk.

While trying to figure out what to do, Elena runs into the child’s father at a nearby beachfront watering hole. When he offers her money for private time with two young local girls she’s watched grow up, Elena accepts the money and flees. The girls are later reported missing.

What follows is an adrenaline-pumping story about privilege, exploitation, power, class, and love. With great skill and a keen eye for the dark corners of the country’s history, Natera has brought forth a novel that will both alarm and bolster you as a reader. Eager to know what would unfold next, I could not put it down.

Out on August 12 from Ballantine Books, The Grand Paloma Resort is Natera’s sophomore novel. A Spanish edition translated by Erika Morillo will be released simultaneously. Ahead of the book’s release, Natera spoke with the Dominican Writers Association about writing a novel set in the Dominican Republic, raising a story’s stakes, and much more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Congratulations on The Grand Paloma Resort. This is your sophomore novel. How do you feel about it coming out soon?

I feel really excited. There’s always jitters with the second book because you just don’t know… I’m so fortunate that Neruda on the Park was received so warmly. We had really good critical acclaim with the book. So I’m definitely nervous, but I would say mostly excited.

Your book is set in the Dominican Republic. It’s a beautiful country where tourists go for sunshine and relaxation. And unfortunately, it’s also where some people go for nefarious reasons. Can you talk us through that dichotomy? Why was it important for you to lay that out in this book?

For me, the first point of inspiration was to celebrate the Dominican Republic for its beauty. I left the Dominican Republic when I was 10 years old and, every time I would go back, there was a sense I had that I was often treated like a visitor by my family or by other Dominicans. You become like a tourist yourself, even though you’re not. Even though for some of us, who are from there, the concept of home becomes a bit more removed. 

I went to college, went to graduate school, got better jobs with more income, and so my class changed since I started traveling back to the Dominican Republic. And when I started going to different resorts and places, I realized that there was this way in which some people go to the Dominican Republic because they love it and want to partake in the culture. But there’s another set of tourism, what I think of as dark tourism, which are the people who are going there to exploit the land and the people. 

As I was thinking about my second book, I was thinking very much in the legacy of Angie Cruz, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Julia Alvarez, who I adore. Many of them had their second or third books set in the Dominican Republic. I wanted to be part of that legacy, so another reason was just being part of that sisterhood of writers. And I wanted to really shine a spotlight into the tourism industry. For me, it was really important that that be a big part of the book.

I know you were also born in the Dominican Republic. Being from there, were there special considerations you kept in mind as you decided what to mention about the country and the way Dominicans are perceived by tourists?

It’s really important for me to treat the characters who are Dominican with a lot of dignity and respect, because the fact is that I am not a Dominican who lives in the Dominican Republic. I’m also not someone who has worked in the tourism industry. When thinking about writing about people in the Dominican Republic who worked in the hotel industry and who had different ethnic backgrounds from my own, for me it was really important to come at it from an informed point of view. I conducted a lot of interviews. I started writing this book in 2020 as a collection of short stories, but I would say that my obsession with tourism and class, and the way that the working class is treated, has been present in my consciousness since I was an adult. Even when I’ve traveled around the Caribbean, I always engage in conversations. But in the Dominican Republic, I was very intentional about interviewing people who worked in hotels and in resorts, and people who are laborers.

Of course, my position as a writer is still one of the imagination. So for me, I still want to have fun. I still want to show characters who are acting in ways that no real person would act. The novel is completely fictional, but I did spend a lot of time interviewing people who live those lives.

Your book largely centers on two sisters. There’s Laura, a local Dominican woman who has risen through the ranks to become manager at the Grand Paloma Resort through her hard work and extreme dedication to her job. And there’s her younger sister, Elena, who tries but can’t seem to live up to her sister’s expectations and has become increasingly dependent on drugs. Both have very different outlooks on life and what it means to survive. What else can you tell us about their relationship?

I really am invested in the relationships between women. You read Neruda on the Park, so you know that I care. There is no place that feels to me more ripe for tension and misunderstanding than two people that truly love each other. But there’s also this sense of obligation between the two sisters. Laura has been in a caretaking role as a mother for her sister Elena, since their mother died when her sister was only four years old. She took on that role of ‘mother.’ 

For me it was really important to situate these two women where there’s a ten-year gap between them, so you know that they’re two very different generations. Laura has tried to protect her sister so that she could have this life that would never be in service of, or catering to others. For Laura, she’s made a lot of compromises in her own life so that her sister would have the best life. When the book starts, Elena is out of control. She doesn’t care about this job. She isn’t very responsible. I thought it would be a really good place to start, like a comedy of errors, where Laura decides she wants to teach her little sister a lesson to force her to grow up. And that sets this chain of events that ultimately leads to a disaster for this community. 

Events in The Grand Paloma Resort begin to escalate after a child in Elena’s care is believed to be dead. Soon, Elena runs into the child’s father, who offers her an obscene amount of money for private time with two young local girls. Elena takes the money and runs. She prays the girls are not harmed. But then they go missing. There is so much going on right there, in this plot. I want to make space for the conversation around the sexual exploitation of minors, which is very much prevalent in other countries as well. As a reader it was hard to read. Can you tell us about your decision to touch on this in your book? 

I think there’s a way in which we should be able to write books that are reflective of the real world. There’s a crisis in the Caribbean. There’s a crisis in the Dominican Republic where young children, especially young girls, are at risk of being human trafficked. They’re put into risky positions. Sometimes we don’t want to really think about who is responsible for that. A lot of times, we just think about these tourists who come to have whatever fun they want to have. At one point, one of the characters who is a tourist says, ‘You can’t blame somebody if somebody is for sale, because they buy.’ 

I wanted this book to be about complicity. How do children come to be at risk? What are the forces? There are individual forces that we can point to, like the dynamic with these two sisters — because Elena is also very young. She’s 17 years old, so she herself is a child. But there’s a complicity that happens with her being put in a position where she really feels like she has to escape. There are also the systems around it and the corruption that exists. This is not something that is only specific to the Dominican Republic. When I was doing research for this book, I was looking at the Caribbean. I was looking at Latin America. It’s also a huge issue in Asia. Where tourism exists, there’s always this underbelly of, a lot of times, the most vulnerable people being prey to systems that don’t protect them. I largely think most tourists that go to our countries are interested in having a good time, relaxing, and not harming anybody. So we’re talking about a very small minority of people who are traveling with these intentions. I really wanted to animate a conversation between readers and people from our countries, about the way in which we put vulnerable people at risk.

Because it takes place over a few days and the stakes are high, there is a sense of urgency in your book. Frankly, you had me stressed. How did you come to the decision to have the book set over a week?

Thank you for that question, because that’s one of the things that I’m most worried about. Because I know there are some readers who love that fast pace and high stakes, I wanted to create a book that the reader wouldn’t be able to put down. That was one of my biggest goals going into the book. I consider that to be a big risk, because I really wanted to put the reader in a place where they felt like they were doing labor in the book, and it was like putting them in the seat of the worker. I haven’t worked in a hotel, but I’ve worked in a lot of different service jobs, and what I know is that there’s a way in which, once you get to work, you work and you don't stop until it’s over. I wanted to animate that for the reader — give them a sense of this pace that doesn’t let up — because I think that’s the reality for a lot of people who are in these kinds of jobs and this kind of industry.

Your book has a cast of characters. To me, each was richly drawn. For example, there’s a curandera and a fisherman employee who takes hospitality to an extreme with guests. What message were you hoping to give readers with these different kinds of characters?

It was really important to center the narrative on workers. There are a couple of points of views in the narrative that stray from that conceit. The name of the book is The Grand Paloma Resort, so giving the multiphonic or multicast view was really important because I wanted the reader to get a sense of the entire world of the resort. What is it like to be a guest, to be in a privileged position? What is it like to be a worker? What is it like to be in love with someone who is very dedicated to this place as a lifestyle? I wanted to center the work with Pablo, Elena and Laura, who are these three current workers in the resort. Vida, who is a curandera, tried to work there and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t compromise her values, and so she only lasted one day there. And there are a few other characters who are contractually connected to the resort, but who aren’t current employees.

My hope was to give the reader a sense of the immensity of the world. I also wanted to honor what I think makes Dominican people really special. It’s like our hustle, right? We work and we’re committed, but there’s also this love of the land and of the history. I wanted these different characters to have these different relationships to work and to the land.

In the book you touch on the treatment of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Much has been reported on this, and narratives about their identity and belonging in DR continue to proliferate on social media. Tell us about your decision to include this conversation in your book.

I consider it to be a humanitarian crisis, what’s happening in the Dominican Republic with both Dominicans of Haitian descent, and migrants from Haiti. There are refugees from Haiti. The situation is very, very difficult. We have a really long history with Haiti in the Dominican Republic. We share an island, but the culture is very different and the background of these two groups of people is really different. 

The first time that I learned about the massacre of Haitian people in 1937 was through the book The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat. I read that when I was in my 20s. It’s really interesting to me as a writer that the way that I came to the knowledge of the history of my country wasn’t when I was in the Dominican Republic up until the fifth grade, and it wasn’t through my family. There were family members who had lived through the massacre, and I never heard any stories from that. So it was really important for me as a writer to consider the first time that I’m setting a book in this island, both the legacy of myself as a Dominican person that lives in the diaspora, and also as a writer and my relationship to the history of my country through literature.

I wanted to write a book that I hope would be a companion to The Farming of Bones, so that if someone read The Farming of Bones and wanted to know in 2025 what has happened, my book could tie that history and give you a sense of what continues to happen today. That was the inspiration for me…. I was thinking a lot about literature and the way that literature can have a relationship to history, and the way in which we can use the novel to animate history, to make people curious.

What do you hope readers take away from The Grand Paloma Resort?

I want readers to pick up the book and feel like they have been transported. I hope people want to visit my country, because I think the Dominican Republic is the most beautiful island in the entire Caribbean. I have traveled far and wide, and I think the Dominican Republic is the most beautiful place in the world, and I want people to have this desire to see it. I also want people to be curious about the history of my country and of the region. I want them to also see the way in which there is this interconnectedness of us as Black people, and that the struggle for liberation and freedom is not an individual struggle, but a communal one. 

Finally, I also want this book to give people hope about the power of love and connection. I wanted to write a book that inspires in people this awareness that the only way through is love. It’s loving your family, and helping them when they fall down. Sometimes all it takes is the right person extending a hand to help them become their better selves. So I want this book to also inspire hope and the transformative power of love, connection, and community.

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Visit our BookShop to preorder a copy of The Grand Paloma Resort.

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About the Author: Cleyvis Natera is the author of Neruda on the Park. She was born in the Dominican Republic, migrated to the United States at ten years old, and grew up in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and a MFA from New York University. Her writing has won awards and fellowships from the International Latino Book Awards, PEN America, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Kenyon Review’s Writers Workshops, the Vermont Studio Center, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Rowland Writers Retreat, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is currently a Fulbright Specialist. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey. The Grand Paloma Resort is her second novel.

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Amaris Castillo is a journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, the Lowell Sun, the Bradenton Herald, Remezcla, Latina Magazine, Parents Latina Magazine, and elsewhere. Her creative writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms be Like..., and most recently in Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, "El Don," was a finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. Amaris lives in Florida with her family. You can follow her work at amariscastillo.com.