The True Nanny Diaries

When the protagonist, Valdi West, left her native Trinidad & Tobago to study at Columbia University on a scholarship, she never expected to be babysitting to survive as an undocumented immigrant in America.

Twenty years later, Valdi refuses to consider her derailed dreams. Instead, she focuses her razor sharp intuition and cutting wit on her babysitting clique: old lady Madam Lucian, who supplements her meager babysitting wages, by selling homemade bread from her Brooklyn apartment; flighty Monica, who's not above throwing in a few "perks" into her Green Card marriage; and Ava, her one time confidant, who outgrows her friends as graduation, a government job, and legal American status, seem all within her grasp.

Set further and further adrift from her dream of becoming an award-winning writer, Valdi’s life becomes hopelessly entangled in the unending demands of her latest employers, a dysfunctional East Side couple with a five-year-old boy. Valdi’s chance encounter with her estranged, wildly successful, twin sister, while minding the boy, pushes her to the brink. She has two choices: sink or swim.