Who do we ask for help when we’ve run out of options?
“There are many little deaths in our lives, to our old selves, to our certainties. But there is an afterlife after that,” says Julia Alvarez in this brief author interview. It is a notion any mature person can appreciate, but the premise that hooked me was that of individual principles colliding with the law. When a respected widow in small-town Vermont, a retired English professor of Dominican descent named Antonia Vega, finds an undocumented and pregnant teen from Mexico on her doorstep, she is faced with not just a humanitarian opportunity but a seeming panacea for her loneliness. What can she do? What is she willing to do?
I couldn’t wait to find out. Unfortunately, the story gets derailed by a secondary plot about family loyalty and mental illness when she is called away to deal with a crisis within her large sisterhood—a compelling topic, but one perhaps better served by its own narrative. Without giving away the ending, I will say that Alvarez finds creative ways to resolve the dual crises in an even-handed manner that reflects reality, offering neither unbounded hope nor total despair.
With the immigration debate dominating news headlines, this 2020 novel by a celebrated Hispanic-American author is a timely read. I would particularly recommend it for students of Spanish looking to hone their skills with well-translated conversational vignettes. 241 pages or 6 ½ hours on Audible, beautifully read by Alma Cuervo.