"A wide-ranging family saga that explores trauma, joy, and redemption.” —Texas Observer
FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF CHASING THE SUN COMES A NEW NOVEL ABOUT IMMIGRATION AND THE DEPTHS TO WHICH ONE MEXICAN AMERICAN FAMILY WILL GO FOR FORGIVENESS AND REDEMPTION
The first time Isabel meets her father-in-law, Omar, he’s already dead—an apparition appearing uninvited on her wedding day. Her husband, Martin, still unforgiving for having been abandoned by his father years ago, confesses that he never knew the old man had died. So Omar asks Isabel for the impossible: persuade Omar’s family—especially his wife, Elda—to let him redeem himself.
Isabel and Martin settle into married life in a Texas border town, and Omar returns each year on the celebratory Day of the Dead. Every year Isabel listens, but to the aggrieved Martin and Elda, Omar’s spirit remains invisible. Through his visits, Isabel gains insight into not just the truth about his disappearance and her husband’s childhood but also the ways grief can eat away at love. When Martin’s teenage nephew crosses the Mexican border and takes refuge in Isabel and Martin’s home, questions about past and future homes, borders, and belonging arise that may finally lead to forgiveness—and alter all their lives forever.
“Sylvester debuts with a page-turning novel that strikes a balance between austere domesticity and suspenseful, life-altering, trauma.”
—Publishers Weekly
ANDRES SUSPECTS HIS WIFE HAS LEFT HIM—AGAIN. THEN HE LEARNS THE UNTHINKABLE HAS HAPPENED: SHE'S BEEN KIDNAPPED.
Too much time and too many secrets have come between Andres and Marabela, but now that she’s gone, he’ll do anything to get her back. Or will he?
As Marabela slips farther away, Andres must decide whether they still have something worth fighting for, and exactly what he’ll give up to bring her home. And unfortunately, the decision isn’t entirely up to him, or up to the private mediator who moves into the family home to negotiate with the terrorists holding Marabela. Andres struggles to maintain the illusion of control while simultaneously scrambling to collect his wife’s ransom, tending to the needs of his two young children, and reconnecting with an old friend who may hold the key to his past and his wife’s future.
Set in Lima, Peru, in a time of civil and political unrest, this evocative page-turner is a perfect marriage of domestic drama and suspense.
“A fascinating, brooding depiction of a kidnapping in Peru and how the price of a happy marriage is much higher than any ransom.”
—Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
