Amanda Cruz, award-winning author and teacher/mentor, is tired. While she would really like to wrap up her prolific literary career, she is haunted by the mass amounts of stories that she didn't complete, from fragments and ideas of writing to well-thought out, half told tales. When her father dies, she and her three sisters inherit packets of land from the Dominican Republic, their home country, which it their responsibility to divide equally. Alma selects the largest parcel, which is also the poorest, located right near the village dump. On that land she constructs a cemetery where she intends to burn and bury her half written works.
Filomena, a poor peasant woman, has only had a life of loss and second best. Her father was cruel and abusive, her mother ran away, her sister was given her name because she liked it better than Filomena, and she had her nephew Perdito ripped away from her when Perla and her no-good husband moved to New York. After caring for Perla's mother-in-law, Filomena returned to her village where she starts working for Alma as a cemetery caretaker-part of her job is listening for any stories that emerge from the ground...and her luck is starting to change.
Alma Cruz is a not so subtle stand-in for Julia Alvarez. While their stories are different, they have many parallels, notably the backgrounds of their families and their ability to tell amazing tales. Of course, it is not autobiographical, but it is a great example of magic realism. The main stories of Trujillo's second wife Bienvenida, and of Manuel Cruz, Alma's father, were mesmerizing, and her relationships with her sisters were both funny and poignant. Book clubs take note!
No comments:
Post a Comment