Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Nov.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT In her first work of fiction, journalist Ojito (Hunting Season) tells a story close to her heart and inspired by family history. Both the author and her protagonist, Mara, immigrated to Florida from Cuba as teenagers, and Ojito's grandmother inspired the character of Mara's great-grandmother Catalina. In one narrative beginning in 2019, journalist Mara travels to the Canary Islands for a story. Mara's mother requests that while there, she locate a copy of Catalina's birth certificate. The second narrative begins with Catalina's mother and grandmother. While sailing to Cuba, they disembark in the Canary Islands after Catalina's grandfather dies on the ship. The two women remake their lives on the islands, and when she is of age, Catalina marries. Catalina and her new husband sail from Spain to Cuba on the ill-fated Valbanera, which sank between Key West and Havana in 1919; none of the 488 bodies of those on board were ever recovered. Mara becomes immersed in Catalina's story as she endeavors to fulfill her mother's request, discovering family secrets along the way. VERDICT At times, Ojito's writing suffers from straightforward telling rather than showing, but this is an appealing novel based in fact, combining aspects of literary and historical fiction.--Jessica Epstein
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
