LAS MUSAS BOOK BIRTHDAY - Vega's Piece of the Sky

Cover Art by Ericka Lugo

Today we celebrate the book birthday of Vega's Piece of the Sky. We sat down with Musa Jennifer Torres to learn about the inspiration behind this book. 

Tell us a little bit about the book:

The meteorite is just the latest thing to crash, uninvited, into Vega Lucero’s rest-stop hometown. But when she discovers how much a chunk of the space rock might be worth, she realizes it’s exactly the treasure she’s been hoping to find. And maybe a way to convince her mom not to sell the family store to big city developers to help pay for her grandpa’s medical expenses. 
Determined to find more pieces of the sky somewhere in the perilous desert wilderness, stubbornly independent Vega must set aside her distrust of outsiders to team up with Jasper, a would-be rival—and her own tagalong cousin Mila—on an overnight adventure to find more meteorites before the professional hunters who have descended on Date City do. But along the way, she realizes that she’s not the only one with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Jasper and Mila have their own secrets and worries that have brought them on this journey.
Together, this ragtag group will ultimately discover that no treasure is big enough to prevent unwelcome change. But family and friends can help weather the unexpected that life brings.

Sounds great, doesn't it?

What 3 words would you use to describe your book?
Summer
Adventure
Heart


How would you describe your main character? Why did you create your character that way?

Vega Lucero is stubborn—steadfast in her loyalty to her family and hometown, and in her belief that treasure might be found anywhere and is often overlooked. She’s self-assured in a way that I very much wasn’t at the same age! That made her a fun character to write. Her fierce love for her tata and her family’s store are what fuel the determination and courage it takes to set off into the desert at night in search of a meteorite. On the other hand, her stubbornness also means she can be mistrustful of others and reluctant to accept help or advice.
Joining Vega on her trek through the desert are Jasper, a baseball player and rock expert who takes on a little too much responsibility for himself and his dad, and Mila, Vega’s shy and anxious cousin who is observant and brave in her own way and who loves astronomy. 

Where did you get the idea to write this particular story?

This middle grade story had a lot of real-life inspirations, which makes it very close to my heart. The first small beginnings of an idea came more than 10 years ago (!) when a meteor fell over Northern California, where the Gold Rush had started 150 years earlier. I lived near there at the time and was fascinated by the meteorite itself - that something that had been traveling in space for billions of years could one day land on Earth - but also by the many people who came to search for a piece of it. 

This story is also inspired by my own family’s history. Vega’s Piece of the Sky is set in a imagined town in California’s Imperial Valley, which is located at the far southeast of the state. It was in the real Imperial Valley that my great-grandparents settled and opened a store to begin a new life in California. That store, just like the one Vega’s family runs, was called the Lone Star. 

And as a backdrop to all of this, I also was thinking about my own summers spent running around with cousins, staying over for nights on end at one tía’s house and then another’s.  And how summer felt like a time when adventure was possible.

What message are you hoping readers will take away from this story?

I hope that readers take from this story a sense of possibility. That their own hometowns are places where they can find treasure — the real kind and the figurative kind — and places where they can launch adventures. I also hope the book leaves them with the reassurance that the people and places we love—although they may change, and although they may leave us and vice versa—become part of our stories, and those stories live on. And, as in all my books, I hope this one makes our understanding of what courage looks like a little bigger.

What comes next for you as an author?

​I can’t wait to share Alight: How the Red-Crowned Parrot Found a New Place to Belong! It’s a lyrical nonfiction picture book, illustrated by Molly Magnell, about how the Red-Crowned Parrot, originally native to Mexico, came to survive and thrive the United States. More than that, it’s about resilience and belonging and human impact on the environment. Coming from Atheneum in Fall 2025!

Buy Vega's Piece of the Sky

Jennifer Torres is the author of more than a dozen books for young readers including Vega’s Piece of the Sky, Stef Soto, Taco Queen, the Bad Princesses series, and the Catalina Incognito series.

She writes stories about home, friendship, and unexpected courage inspired by her Mexican-American heritage.

Jennifer started her career as a newspaper reporter, and even though she writes fiction now, she hopes her stories still have some truth in them. She holds a doctorate in education and lives with her family in Southern California.
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Find her online at www.jenntorres.com
​Instagram: @jennanntorres

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