Depth of the Ocean

With Depth of the Ocean coming out this summer, I have decided to start a series on some of my favorite municipios y locales de Puerto Rico. The first stop will be the setting for Depth: The Mona and Puerto Rico Trench.

The Puerto Rico trench is where the North American plate and the Caribbean plate meet: a mix of two places. Kind of like me--and a lot like Aleja. Mona Canyon is a wild, protected, not quite as deep section of the ocean surrounding Puerto Rico, dividing Puerto Rico's main island from Mona Island--a place I would love to visit to see all the wildlife.

Aleja, like me, is a child of a Puerto Rican mother and a United States father, and she represents many people in the Puerto Rican diaspora: people who are a mix of the mainland (Estados Unidos or the US) and Puerto Rico. This is why I chose the Puerto Rico trench as her intended destination for colonization. I love symbolism.

About Puerto Rico: It is part of the Greater Antilles. From what I understand, Antilles comes from the word Antillia, which was a fictional island from the time Europeans began exploring the Caribbean. When I saw that, my mind immediately went to Atlantis--and then I decided I needed to somehow combine the two. Thus, Depth of the Ocean was born.