How far would you go to make your wildest dreams come true? Welcome to The Grand Paloma Resort by Dominican author Cleyvis Natera, a deliciously delirious novel that forces readers to face that question head on.

The Grand Paloma Resort is an unsparing and heart-wrenching exploration of life for local staff at a fictional elite resort in the Dominican Republic.

Think of a plot that, on its face, feels similar to White Lotus. Except, this tale centers the lives of the resort workers and relegates hotel patrons to the background – where author Natera believes they rightfully belong.

The novel boldly (and rightfully) asserts that the most intriguing stories at these elite hotels belong to the laborers, who make these once-in-a-lifetime experiences possible for the demanding guests. As we learn in chapter 12 of the book, our protagonist finds “the idea that the most interesting thing at any resort could ever possibly be the guests absurd.”

Throughout the novel, Natera focuses on the inherent struggle between community and capital gain for Latina laborers. Using the hospitality industry as a vehicle for this conflict, the author highlights the tension between individual financial security and community progress in a deeply fraught labor system.

The story opens by introducing a pair of sisters. There’s 27-year-old Laura, a local in the resort town of Pico Diablo who has risen through the ranks of the hotel staff. And there’s Elena, her rebellious, justice-oriented, and often-chaotic 17-year-old little sister who cannot seem to follow the rules of the resort to literally save her own life.

The two women fight tooth-and-nail for competing priorities: Laura desperately wants a promotion to become the manager of The Grand Paloma Resort hotel chain’s Portugal property, move to Europe permanently, and abandon the stress and trauma she associates with the town of Pico Diablo forever. Elena, on the other hand, wants to liberate the resort staff from their oppressive working conditions and stop the deportations of Haitians in her hometown. As the two sisters work towards their dreams, they encounter several challenges, including the incredibly wealthy and often-petulant resort patrons, the covert racism of hotel management, and their own competing desires.

Laura’s plotline is particularly compelling. As she runs around the resort attempting to put out several fires – some caused by Elena, some by exacting guests, and others by the disobedience of her overworked and underpaid employees – we begin to see just how much she has to sacrifice in order to actualize her dream of escaping the island for good.

Laura’s boss and mentor, Miranda, dangles the prospect of her promotion over her head in ways that she never does to her other subordinates, a majority of whom are college-educated, white, and male. We watch as Laura regurgitates model-minority talking points, often clinging to the narrative that she must be obscenely grateful for her position, given that she is the first in her town to ever reach such heights. As Natera writes in chapter 6 of the novel, “Laura knew herself to be exceptionally capable. But she was also an unremarkable person from a place most people thought of as a third-world country… No one was impressed that she’d somehow managed, against all odds, to reach heights no local had ever reached.”

Laura’s precarious position within the resort, coupled with her continuous self-degradation and negative self-talk disguised as realism, drives her character to desperation. As her dreams get further out of reach, she descends into darkness, making choices to exploit and actively harm those around her.

Her fall begins slowly: she bullies a few of her underperforming subordinates, works to conceal the better working conditions at other properties in the Paloma portfolio to cut costs for upper management, and overworks her most loyal employees. But as the novel continues and the stakes get higher, Laura acts in ways that are absolutely diabolical, breaking the law and betraying her peers.

On the other end of the spectrum, Elena’s character serves as a difficult reminder of the old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We slowly learn that the 17-year-old sister has worked tirelessly to improve conditions for the resort’s Haitian construction workers. Her goal is to protect them from the Dominican Republic’s harsh and violent deportation policy. But as she faces the possibility of an arrest, she ultimately betrays some of the most vulnerable locals in Pico Diablo.

The Grand Paloma Resort is a searing story that unearths the trauma of intracommunity rejection in the name of capitalistic success. Natera brings us on a tense, whiplash-inducing journey with this complicated group of local workers on their descent into darkness in the name of material desire. At the end of it all, she leaves us with one inspiring truth: that abandoning individualism and embracing the love of our community is the key to making our most sincere dreams come true.