Olga Dies Dreaming

Content Warning: This novel features brief descriptions of sexual assault, suicide, and intolerance toward gay people.

Napkins, the book’s narrator—Olga Isabel Acevedo—thinks, are a sign of how wealthy a person is, particularly at weddings. Olga, a Puerto Rican New Yorker, is a wedding planner. She tells the head waiter exactly how to fold the napkins for her client’s wedding, claiming that the bride intends to take the expensive linens home afterward. However, she also plans on taking some for her cousin Mabel’s wedding in the fall. She doesn’t actually like her cousin, who always competes with Olga. Mabel has been holding her engagement over Olga, but now Olga can get revenge using the napkins—her family will think that they’re classy, attributing that touch to Olga and not to Mabel.

Olga’s assistant Meegan reveals that Jan, Olga’s favorite catering captain, is not coming. When Olga calls to yell at the owner of the catering company about this, she learns that Jan is dead.

Olga attends Jan’s wake, discovering that he died by suicide and that his Catholic family didn’t know he was gay. Jan’s boyfriend, Christian, who found his body, suspects that being HIV-positive heightened Jan’s depression. As they talk, Christian gets flustered, worried about rent now that Jan’s gone.