Review by Booklist Review
Balibrera's lush historical novel, her first, is narrated by the ghosts of four young Indigenous women who lived near a volcano and were victims of the real-life 1932 El Salvadoran ethnocide called La Matanza. They recount the lives of their childhood friends Graciela and Consuela, daughters of a tenant farmer who becomes a trusted adviser of a ruthless general (inspired by Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez). When the father mysteriously dies, the general installs the younger daughter Graciela (a mere child) as an oracle to advise him on governmental matters. She and Consuela are forced to live in the palace, apart from their anguished mother. After the massacre, they eventually escape, Consuela to San Francisco and Paris, where she mingles with artists and elites; and Graciela to Los Angeles, where she is a struggling actress working in a factory. Alas, the narrative flow suffers from a lack of context for non-Spanish speakers and rambling story lines that minimize significant events in El Salvadoran history. Still, the young narrators provide irreverent commentary alongside dramatic storytelling depicting the hardscrabble lives of determined sisters yearning for better lives.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Balibrera's wrenching debut follows sisters Consuelo and Graciela after they're displaced by a massacre in El Salvador. As little girls in 1914, they're raised by their Indigenous mother, Socorrito, who labors on a coffee finca and was pursued by the girls' biological father, Germán, the second most powerful man on the finca, because of her light skin. When Consuelo is four, Germán takes her from Socorrito and brings her home to his wife, Perlita, who is barren. After Germán dies in 1923, Perlita steals the younger Graciela and gives Consuelo to the country's dictator, a former general known by his many detractors as El Gran Pendejo, as part of a complex plot to curry favor with him. In the 1930s, when El Gran Pendejo launches a genocidal campaign against the young women's Indigenous community, they both flee the country. Consuelo, an aspiring artist, pursues her career in San Francisco and France, while Graciela, an actor, stars in degrading Spanish-language films in Hollywood. With keen psychological insight, Balibrera portrays how the women, each of whom doesn't know the other has survived, make hard choices in search of fulfillment. It adds up to a powerful story of finding the strength to chart one's own course. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Balibrera debuts with a heart-wrenching portrait of Graciela and Consuelo, sisters caught up in the whirlwind of violence and political machinations in 1930s El Salvador. Born into an Indigenous community at the foot of a volcano, the two are separated in childhood but reunited in the capital, where Graciela serves as an oracle to an increasingly unhinged dictatorial general. When the general unleashes a brutal genocidal campaign on the sisters' home, they are caught in the mayhem, each believing that the other has died. They flee the country, heading in different directions, though each is accompanied by the ghosts of their childhood friends, who guide them, offer sharp-tongued commentary, and stand witness. Inés del Castillo serves as the primary narrator, La Yina, who conveys the story's momentum and, as a stand-in for Balibrera, is gently ribbed by the raucous ghostly chorus. Gisela Chípe, Elena Rey, Alma Cuervo, and E.A. Castillo vibrantly narrate the slain friends, bringing out their insouciant individuality and allowing listeners to imagine the women they might have become. VERDICT A haunting, layered story of community, empowerment, courage, and sisterhood, not to be missed.--Sarah Hashimoto
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A captivating rendition of early-20th-century El Salvador. Graciela and her four closest friends grow up on a coffee plantation nestled on a volcano, surrounded by the "joyful ferocity" of their mothers' love. Their lives on the estate are simple but vibrant. They think little of men, including their fathers, until a man from the capital comes looking for Graciela. Her absent father was the second-in-command and spiritual adviser to the ambitious general referred to as El Gran Pendejo, and he has died. She is summoned to the capital to pay her respects and there meets her long-lost sister, Consuelo, who was kidnapped from their village by her father as a gift for his barren wife. Both now trapped under the thumb of the general, the two reluctantly grow close until El Gran Pendejo, who has bloated into a full-fledged dictator, unleashes unspeakable terror on the nation's Indigenous population. The inhabitants of their home village are massacred, including Graciela's childhood friends, who narrate this tale from beyond the grave. In prose that, while supple, does not stray from the harshness of history, the voices of these four murdered girls unite in a ghostly chorus to project the story of their friend and her sister, survivors of genocide. Their visions of Graciela and Consuelo are riveting; the two women, both striking characters, build physically separate but spiritually linked lives in California and Paris in the 1930s. Balibrera eulogizes the lives lost in La Matanza, the real-life 1932 massacre of the Pipil people by the Salvadoran government, and underscores the value of holding one's culture close, even when it threatens to disrupt just-scarring wounds. Despite the singular narratives sanctioned by those in power, "every myth, every story, has at least two versions," and "if you don't tell it properly, if you say it too quietly, you erase everyone's face as you go." The resilience of sisterly bonds forms the backbone of this swirling, heart-wrenching debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
