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by Sylvia Sellers-Garcia
Nítido knows he was born in Guatemala, but he doesn't know where, or why his family left. Raised in the United States by his immigrant parents, he never asked them about his homeland as a child - and they never talked about it. When Nítido loses his father to Alzheimer's disease, his despondent mother grows increasingly silent. Realizing that his only links to the past are disappearing, he travels to Guatemala, against his mother's wishes, to see what he can uncover for himself.
He arrives in the tiny town of Río Roto, where he suspects his family came from, prepared to ask questions, and perhaps find work teaching there. But when he is mistaken for the new local priest, N'tido decides to play the part, thinking that the confessional confidences of the townspeople will prove more fruitful than ordinary conversation in leading him to the answers he seeks. What he finds in Río Roto, though, is a place shrouded in silence and secrets, a place that can neither escape nor give voice to the unnamed horrors it has survived. Nítido is at once determined and frightened to unearth these horrors - even as they force him to reevaluate his own haunted past.
"The author tries much too hard to channel Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and the great Mexican political novelist Juan Rulfo. Atmospheric, to be sure, but all atmosphere." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Unsettling, evocative, and fascinating, this is a well-drawn portrait of a time and place very, very different from our own. Highly recommended for collections of literary fiction, especially those with an interest in Central America." - Library Journal.
"While the pace is slowed by Nítido's letters to his dead father, this spare and vivid debut brings together wrenching personal and political histories." - Publishers Weekly.
This information about When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sylvia Sellers-García was born in Boston and grew up in the United States and Costa Rica. A graduate of Brown University and a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, she has worked at Harper's and The New Yorker. This is her first novel.
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