Puerto Rico has lately become a political football, but for the narrator of Ann Arbor novelist Camille Pagan’s “Life and Other Near-Death Experiences,” it’s a place to figure out what to do when everything’s falling apart.

In sharp contrast, everything now seems to be coming together for Pagan.

Some initial good news came last fall, when editors at Amazon chose “Life” as a Kindle First selection.

Each month, editors at Amazon choose six new fiction titles for Kindle First and offer them to Prime subscribers before the books’ official release dates. Subscribers may choose to download one of the offerings  free, while nonsubscribers can purchase them for $1.99. Pagan’s book was part of October’s Kindle First grouping, and  it soon topped Kindle’s overall best-seller list, staying at No. 1 for most of that month. (More than 2,600 readers have reviewed “Life” on Amazon, and their combined rating for the novel is an impressive 4.5 out of 5 stars.)

Yet in the moment, when “Life” was riding high in Amazon’s Kindle rankings, Pagan struggled to believe it. READ THE REST HERE