Starred review from August 15, 2024
A busy El Paso lawyer embarks on a supernatural journey when she uncovers a startling truth about her great-aunt. In 1943, Elena Eduviges Montoya, called "Nena" by her family, resigns herself to serving her older sisters as a housemaid and nanny while World War II rages, "biding her time until the Germans attacked." But one sweltering afternoon, Nena has a vision foretelling the death of their landlord, and that night she receives a midnight visit from black-clad Sister Benedicta de la Cruz, who transports her to 1792--when El Paso del Norte was still part of New Spain--and leads her to a strange convent, where the nuns are likewise afflicted by visions. Nena learns she must remain in this enchanted realm in order to undertake training to channel "La Vista," that part of God that comprises nature and chaos, before she can return home. Fast forward to the present day, and Nena's great-niece, Marta, juggles her roles as a lawyer at a struggling firm, a mother to two boys, and a wife stuck in a humdrum marriage. All this gets turned upside down when an alarming kitchen brings Nena to live with Marta's family. After Marta has an unnerving experience with seemingly supernatural soot ("when she opens her eyes again, the wall continues to blink, soot there, soot gone"), Nena comes clean about a secret she's kept for a lifetime: She gave birth to a baby, Rosa, during her time on "the other side." The revelation sets the women on a path to recover Rosa from the shadowy realm of El Paso del Norte. Alternating chapters between Nena's past and Marta's present, Jaramillo braids the storylines together like a mal de ojo bracelet, seamlessly weaving in Spanish language terms and Mexican cultural touchstones such as pozole, rebozo, and el aquelarre. Jaramillo's atmospheric prose conjures the dusty El Paso of the past, and depictions of La Vista vibrate with "colorful knots of waves," glowing indigo, maroon, and bright pink, yielding "a wild spell, like yeast in the air." This riveting page-turner affirms the adage, "Family stories teach us how to live. Family secrets teach us to kill parts of ourselves." Gripping and cinematic, the novel's worlds of El Paso past and present will bewitch and enrapture.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)
September 1, 2024
Two women must combine their magical powers and find a little girl lost to time and space in this moving novel about heritage and heartbreak. When Marta, a busy lawyer and mother of two, brings home her 93-year-old great aunt, she's not expecting to discover that she's a bruja. The elderly and eccentric Nena has "La Vista," and is determined to convince her great-niece that it sings within her, too. Together, they can reach 1700s Mexico and locate a daughter left in a long-gone convent that once sheltered a witch coven, or aquelarre. How can Nena prove to a rational person that spells and portals are real when her own sisters never believed her? Switching perspectives between the past and present, Jaramillo's debut novel strikingly portrays a family's unrelenting love and survival across borders, generations, and adversity with vivid descriptions of El Paso, Juarez, and the supernatural. Fans of Isabel Ca�as, Zoraida C�rdova, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia who enjoy historical fiction and subtle fantasy will devour this book.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 21, 2024
A middle-aged woman comes to terms with the magic harnessed by her great-aunt in this spirited gothic debut novel from Jaramillo (The Doctor’s Wife, a story collection). As a wife, mother, and high-powered lawyer, Marta is distracted by the need to care for her late grandmother’s 93-year-old sister, Nena, who now lives alone but was institutionalized as a teenager, after she claimed to have time-traveled to an 18th-century convent. In a parallel narrative, the reader learns Nena’s claim was true, and that she was summoned by witches disguised as nuns. The witches teach Nena how to harness the spirit of La Vista, a powerful force derived from nature. After she falls in love with Emiliano, the brother of one of the sisters, she uses the power to heal him from smallpox. Then Emiliano gets her pregnant, and after giving birth to a girl, the sisters send her back to her old life without the baby. Marta’s story is less developed, and the conclusion feels rushed, but Jaramillo evocatively portrays the ways in which she and Nena gain strength from the land and their family. It’s an inspired effort. Agent: Kent Wolf, Neon Literary.