Song of the Water Saints Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Song of the Water Saints Book

In Nelly Rosario's beautifully written family saga Song 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 Saints is an unusually assured debut from a promising writer. --Regina MarlerRead More

from£24.21 | RRP: £15.94
* Excludes Voucher Code Discount Also available Used from £9.83
  • Product Description

    â??The circle of myth, history, longing, and grief in Song of the Water Saints will envelop the reader as it does the lives of Nelly Rosarioâ??s beautifully realized characters.â?
    â??Maureen Howard, author of A Loverâ??s Almanac

    Poetic, transporting, and heartbreaking, this debut novel traces the lives of three generations of courageous Dominican women.

    First there is Graciela: a young girl rebelling against the strictures of her poor, rural life in the Dominican Republic in the early 1900s, she searches for her true destiny even as it lures her away from her husband and baby daughter. . . . Then there is Mercedes, passionately devoted to the Church, who rears herself after the death of her beloved stepfather, eventually marrying and moving with her husband to New York City, where she will bring up her granddaughter. . . . Coming of age in the freewheeling 1990sâ??and bringing the story full circleâ??Leila has without a doubt inherited the restless genes of great-grandmother Graciela. . . .

    The intimate details of life in New York and the Dominican Republic, the broad strokes of history, the subtleties of familial connection amid changing notions of home and obligationâ??all are rendered with grace and gritty realism in this remarkably accomplished novel.

  • 0375420878
  • 9780375420870
  • Nelly Rosario
  • 1 February 2002
  • Pantheon Books
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 256
  • First Edition/First Printing
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. If you click through any of the links below and make a purchase we may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you). Click here to learn more.

Would you like your name to appear with the review?

We will post your book review within a day or so as long as it meets our guidelines and terms and conditions. All reviews submitted become the licensed property of www.find-book.co.uk as written in our terms and conditions. None of your personal details will be passed on to any other third party.

All form fields are required.