Deeper than the Ocean
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
A moving multigenerational novel about the enduring power of a mother’s love, the ripple effect of secrets, and the strength of family bonds from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
In 1919 Spain, Catalina Quintana is the eldest daughter in a family of silkworm farmers on the tiny island of La Palma in the remote Canary Islands. Fiercely independent, Catalina dreams of building a life with her childhood love. But when a devastating fire ruins her family's silkworm farm, she's forced into a loveless marriage and a journey across the sea to Cuba aboard a doomed ocean liner.
A century later, in 2019, journalist Mara Denis travels to La Palma to cover a modern-day disaster near the island. But the trip becomes personal when her mother asks her to find a long-lost birth certificate. Long haunted by the sea and plagued by dreams of a daughter she's never had, Mara begins to uncover a hidden family history that centers on Catalina, her great-grandmother who, she soon discovers, is listed among the dead in the infamous Valbanera shipwreck. As Mara follows Catalina's trail across Spain, Cuba, and Key West, she unearths a story of forbidden love and resilience that echoes through six generations.
Told in a dual narrative that moves seamlessly between past and present, Deeper than the Ocean is a meditation on the strength of women, the enduring power of a mother's love, and the corrosive hold of family secrets across oceans and time.
This sweeping novel is perfect for fans of Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, and Kristin Hannah.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer-winning journalist Ojito (Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus) makes her fiction debut with an affecting parallel narrative of two women, each exiled from their island home nearly a century apart. In 2019, 50-something Cuban American reporter Mara Dennis is assigned to cover the drowning of African refugees en route to the Canary Islands. The location triggers her fear of the ocean, which she's had since she fled Cuba four decades earlier on a small boat. The past is dredged up in other ways, as Mara's emotionally distant mother, Lina, asks her to obtain the birth certificate of her great-grandmother, Catalina, in Tenerife. Alternating chapters follow Catalina from her birth in the Canary Islands in 1900 through her tumultuous affair with a star-crossed lover, arranged marriage, and ill-fated voyage to Cuba aboard the steamship Valbanera, which is shipwrecked in a hurricane off Key West. Generations later, as Mara digs into Catalina's life, she contends with a series of mysteries, including that Catalina's name was missing from the Valbanera's manifest for its final voyage. Ojito vividly portrays the two women's struggles, and the dramatic story ends on a hopeful note as Mara attempts to resolve her feelings about the past and improve her relationship with Lina. This one's tough to shake.
