The Barefoot Queen
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
1748, Seville: Caridad, a recently freed Cuban slave, wanders the streets of the city. Her master is dead and she has nowhere to go. When she meets Milagro Carmona - a young, rebellious gypsy - the two women are instantly inseparable. Milagros introduces Caridad to the gypsy community, an exotic fringe society that will soon bring them love and change their life forever.
From the tumultuous bustle of 18th-century Seville to the theatres of Madrid, THE BAREFOOT QUEEN takes us into the murky world of tobacco smuggling and ther persecution of the gypsies.
Showing us the birth of Flamenco, it is a historical fresco filled with characters that live, love, fight and suffer for what they believe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Falcones follows The Cathedral of the Sea with a ponderous novel about two female friends, both strong and yet disenfranchised in 1748 Spain. Former slave Caridad lands penniless in Seville after her owner dies on the voyage from Cuba. Milagros Carmona is the beloved granddaughter of Melchor Vega, the gypsy who gives Caridad a temporary home that soon becomes permanent. Fearful Caridad bonds with Milagros and accustoms herself to gypsy life, finding work with the smuggled tobacco they sell, while Milagros struggles to accept the marriage her parents arrange. Milagros's fianc is killed after she urges him to take revenge on a payo, or nongypsy, who has victimized Caridad, and the clan punishes Milagros for causing his death. Then Spain's king outlaws gypsy culture, scattering the family and the community. After the decree is gradually lifted, Milagros's singing and dancing talents make her famous, but the man she loves proves to be a cruelly abusive husband. When Melchor vows vengeance against Milagros's abuser, both Melchor's life and Caridad's the deep love for him are put at risk. This story lacks the focus and momentum that made Falcones's last novel so successful. She powerfully evokes the time and place, but the narrative is overly broad and slow-moving.
