Las Madres
A novel
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4.3 • 7 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning, best-selling author of When I Was Puerto Rican, a powerful novel of family, race, faith, sex, and disaster that moves between Puerto Rico and the Bronx, revealing the lives and loves of five women and the secret that binds them together
They refer to themselves as “las Madres,” a close-knit group of women who, with their daughters, have created a family based on friendship and blood ties.Their story begins in Puerto Rico in 1975 when fifteen-year-old Luz, the tallest girl in her dance academy and the only Black one in a sea of petite, light-skinned, delicate swans, is seriously injured in a car accident. Tragically, her brilliant, multilingual scientist parents are both killed in the crash. Now orphaned, Luz navigates the pressures of adolescence and copes with the aftershock of a brain injury, when two new friends enter her life, Ada and Shirley. Luz’s days are consumed with aches and pains, and her memory of the accident is wiped clean, but she suffers spells that send her mind to times and places she can’t share with others.
In 2017, in the Bronx, Luz’s adult daughter, Marysol, wishes she better understood her. But how can she when her mother barely remembers her own life? To help, Ada and Shirley’s daughter, Graciela, suggests a vacation in Puerto Rico for the extended group, as an opportunity for Luz to unearth long-buried memories and for Marysol to learn more about her mother’s early life. But despite all their careful planning, two hurricanes, back-to-back, disrupt their homecoming, and a secret is revealed that blows their lives wide open. In a voice that sings with warmth, humor, friendship, and pride, celebrated author Esmeralda Santiago unspools a story of women’s sexuality, shame, disability, and love within a community rocked by disaster.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Santiago (Conquistadora) delivers an immersive intergenerational saga set in New York City, Maine, and Puerto Rico. Lesbian couple Ada and Shirley and their friend Luz are the "las madres" of the title; Luz's daughter Marysol, whose apartment is across the hall from her mom's in the Bronx, and Ada and Shirley's daughter Graciela, who lives near her mothers in coastal Maine, are "las nenas." Marysol and Graciela were born in the U.S. but feel a visceral attachment to Puerto Rico, their mothers' "homeland." As the group prepares for a trip to the island to celebrate Shirley's 70th birthday in 2017, Graciela, who has been told by Ada and Shirley that she was conceived by Ada in a long-forgotten one-night stand, "wonders whether DNA testing might shed some light on her parentage." Meanwhile, flashbacks to mid-1970s Puerto Rico recount an accident that left an adolescent Luz with a traumatic brain injury, and when an unexpected turn of events brings the group to familiar Puerto Rican neighborhoods, long-held family secrets threaten to surface. Santiago wrings palpable emotion from her characters, and hauntingly portrays Hurricane María's devastating effect on the island. There are false notes, including Graciela's characterization-via-hashtag ("she considers herself #spiritual"), but also a profound sincerity. This tenderhearted story of trauma and recovery has undeniable appeal.
