The Volcano Daughters

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Balibrera, Gina	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2025
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Balibrera, Gina Maria	4-week checkout	Due 05-16-2025
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Balibrera, Gina Maria	4-week checkout	Due 05-12-2025

"A saucy, searingly original debut about two sisters raised in the shadow of El Salvador's brutal dictator, El Gran Pendejo, and their flight from genocide, which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to cannery row, each followed by a chorus of furies, the ghosts of their murdered friends, who aren't yet done telling their stories. El Salvador, 1923. Graciela grows up on a volcano in a community of indigenous women indentured to coffee plantations owned by the country's wealthiest, until a messenger from the Capital comes to claim her: at nine years old she's been chosen to be an oracle for a rising dictator-a sinister, violent man wedded to the occult. She'll help foresee the future of the country. In the Capital she meets Consuelo, the sister she's never known, stolen away from their home before Graciela was born. The two are a small fortress within the dictator's regime, but they're no match for El Gran Pendejo's cruelty. Years pass and terror rises as the economy flatlines, and Graciela comes to understand the horrific vision that she's unwittingly helped shape just as genocide strikes the community that raised her. She and Consuelo barely escape, each believing the other to be dead. They run, crossing the globe, reinventing their lives, and ultimately reconnecting at the least likely moment. Endlessly surprising, vividly imaginative, bursting with lush life, The Volcano Daughters charts, through the stories of these sisters and the ghosts they carry with them, a new history and mythology of El Salvador, fiercely bringing forth voices that have been calling out for generations."-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Beautiful Sisterhoods Rejoice submitted by trender on August 15, 2024, 11:00am Historical fiction penned with contemporary frankness, this story celebrates women creating futures of their own design, despite the most horrifying of circumstances (CW: genocide). Brought to life with true-to-ear dialogue and deliciously unfiltered inner monologues, this story celebrates the lifelong connection found in the bonds of sisterhood. When a genocidal dictator takes hold of El Salvador, the daughters of female coffee farmers on the volcano have to flee for their lives. Not everyone survives (RIP Lourdes, María, Cora, and Lucía), but in spirit they root for Graciela as she makes a new home for herself in Hollywood and Consuelo as she pursues art in Paris. While there’s a touch of the supernatural in the story, the sections with Lourdes, María, Cora, and Lucía read like a voice-y Greek chorus of women championing our protagonists. Think more “fierce and loving sisterhood looking out,” less “ghost story.” I loved spending time with these women. What a spectacular debut.

Beautiful and engrossing story submitted by shannon5 on August 18, 2024, 6:23pm There’s so much to love about this book — the narration by a crew of fantasmas, the compelling story of sisters torn apart and reunited by history, the gorgeously evoked landscape of Izalco and cityscapes of SF and LA, the ways creation stories and heroic myths are woven into a modern story — I could go on! Savor this book page by page.