Luisita Lopez Torregrosa writes about family, loss, and Puerto Rico in The Noise of Infinite Longing.

Luisita Lopez Torregrosa's The Noise of Infinite Longing begins with the death of her mother, the cinematic Maria Luisa, a beautiful and intelligent lawyer from Puerto Rico's upper class who had six children with the author's father, a temperamental small-town doctor with old-fashioned ideas about a woman's place. Lopez Torregrosa writes vividly and honestly about her relationships with family members -- who include her sister Angeles, who became a Sandinista revolutionary in Nicaragua, and her brother Amaury, a Bronx schoolteacher whose alcohol binges remind the author of her father -- reconstructing the family's past as her siblings gather for the funeral.

While probing the universal feelings triggered by the death of a parent, Lopez Torregrosa's engrossing story of a complex childhood amid strong personalities also provides a revealing look at life in Puerto Rico, which as far as many Americans are concerned, is a place devoid of any discernable past. Lopez Torregrosa's maternal grandmother was, ''A woman of the old world, [who] had been brought up by governesses and tutors, had grown up at dinner tables frequented by men who would one day figure in the history books.'' Her father was not from the same class, but was deemed an acceptable match for her mother. Lopez Torregrosa was the first born, and the growing family soon ''moved to the rhythm of our father's life;'' they traded a privileged existence in San Juan for a stint on a run-down farm. Still, and despite her husband's disapproval, Maria Luisa commuted to work in the capital, even during her pregnancies. Lopez Torregrosa recalls her father's infidelities and fits of anger and her mother's silent suffering. Eventually, they divorced, with Maria Luisa later re-marrying and settling in Texas.

The author, who left the island for boarding school in Pennsylvania, later went on to college, traveled the world, and is currently an editor at The New York Times. At the end of The Noise of Infinite Longing, Lopez Torregrosa attends the funeral of her estranged father in Puerto Rico. She still thinks of it as home: ''For all of us -- my sisters and brother and myself,'' she writes, ``Life began here, on this island, and that defines us, that completes us.''

Luisita Lopez Torregrosa reads as part of the book fair's Puerto Rican Memories event, with Marta Moreno Vega, at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 13, in room 7128 on the first floor of Building 7.