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Title details for Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias - Available

Where There Was Fire

A Novel

by John Manuel Arias
Adriana Sananes
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available

"Bilingual Spanish/English audiobook narrator Sananes enlivens Costa Rican American poet/writer Arias' multigenerational saga." —Booklist

A lush and lyrical debut novel about a Costa Rican family wrestling with a deadly secret, from rising literary star John Manuel Arias
Costa Rica, 1968. When a lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company's most lucrative banana plantation burning all evidence of a massive cover-up, the future of Teresa Cepeda Valverde's family is changed forever.
Now, twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are still picking up the pieces. Lyra wants nothing to do with Teresa, but is desperate to find out what happened to her family that fateful night. Teresa, haunted by a missing husband and the bitter ghost of her mother, Amarga, is unable to reconcile the past. What unfolds is a story of a mother and daughter trying to forgive what they do not yet understand, and the mystery at the heart of one family's rupture, steeped in machismo, jealousy, labor uprisings, and the havoc wreaked by banana plantations in Central America.
Brimming with ancestral spirits, omens, and the anthropomorphic forces of nature, John Manuel Arias weaves a brilliant tapestry of love, loss, secrets, and redemption in Where There was Fire.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 29, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781250868961
      • File size: 300264 KB
      • Duration: 10:25:32

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      A Costa Rican family's generational trauma impacts their descendants in ways they don't fully understand because of secrets that have never been shared. Adriana Sananes adopts both Spanish and English accents throughout the complex dynamics of five generations who were affected by the exploitation of the Great American Fruit Company. The corruption of the U.S. banana company left many Costa Rican men infertile. This epic tale includes despondent men abandoning their families, suicides, arson, a hurricane, and passionate love affairs. Despite Sananes's excellent narration, listeners may experience some difficulty keeping the storyline clear. L.J.C.A. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 31, 2023
      In Arias’s lush and ambitious debut, the women of a Costa Rican family wrestle with their resentments and secrets in the long shadow of a banana plantation. On a hot night in 1968, two catastrophic events alter the lives and fortunes of the Sánchez Cepeda household: José María murders his mother-in-law in front of his wife, Teresa, and one of his daughters, and the American Fruit Company’s largest plantation burns to the ground. In 1995, the surviving family members are still trying to make sense of what happened. Teresa, now about to turn 60, has continued to live in the same house in Barrio Ávila, with only her mother’s ghost for company. A dire medical diagnosis forces her estranged daughter, Lyra, to contemplate allowing Teresa to meet her grandson, Gabriel. Hanging over the familial tension is the legacy of U.S. agricultural exploitation, particularly the use of toxic pesticides on American Fruit Company crops. Arias shows a knack for arresting images (“He stumbled out into a mud-dirt road and swayed in the imaginary breeze only drunken men feel”) as he winds back and forth through time. The novel is strongest capturing the complications of love and the parental struggle not to inflict the traumas they inherited on their children. It’s a rewarding outing from an exciting new voice with a prowess for lyricism. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary.

    • Library Journal

      June 10, 2024

      In his luminous debut novel, Arias tells the story of a Costa Rican family whose lives are overshadowed by the corrupt American Fruit Company, which maintains a toxic stranglehold over the nation's fruit production. The book opens in 1968 with a fire that destroys the company's biggest plantation in Costa Rica, with lasting consequences for the family. That same night sees the tragic death of Teresa Cepeda Valverde's mother and the disappearance of Teresa's husband, Jos� Mar�a. Arias artfully employs a nonlinear timeline, starting at the fire and then jumping forward and backward in time. This narrative structure keeps listeners engaged, wondering about Teresa's beloved husband, her mother's awful death, and the unsettling happenings on the plantation. With crystalline tones, narrator Adriana Sananes skillfully voices a variety of Costa Rican and U.S. accents, employing shifts in tone and pacing to bring out the lyricism of Arias's prose. While listeners may be intrigued by the mystery, they will be equally enchanted by Arias's beautiful imagery and language. VERDICT This tragic, piercingly told tale of a family in flux should resonate with audiences seeking lush, character-driven literary fiction, in the vein of Jhumpa Lahiri and Abraham Verghese.--Laura Trombley

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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