Song of the Water Saints
In Nelly Rosario's beautifully written family sagaSong of the Water Saints, Graciela, an unwilling mother and a halfhearted wife, spends her days imagining sea voyages and tracing shapes in the clouds. She is so restless, yet so trapped in Dominican village life, that she wakes at night to rub camphor oil into her itching feet. Finally, a fortuneteller advises her to "stop living between nostalgia and hope." It is up to Graciela's daughter and her children to make use of the freedoms that eluded Graciela, whose life was shaped not only by poverty but also by the brutal U.S. military occupation of the Dominican Republic, the brief flowering of a belle époque in the 1920s, and the  30-year military dictatorship of Trujillo. With an almost painterly attention to foreground and background, Rosario stresses the importance of these events without letting them overshadow her richly imagined world.Song of the Water Saintsis an unusually assured debut from a promising writer.--Regina Marler--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.