Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.Īn Amazon Best Book of August 2018: While this autobiographically-inspired novel vividly summons the turmoil of 1990s Colombia, it’s more a story of private intimacies than national history. In lush prose, Rojas Contreras has written a powerful testament to the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation. Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories. As both girls' families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction. But Petrona's unusual behavior belies more than shyness. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.

Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. “Simultaneously propulsive and poetic, reminiscent of Isabel Allende.Listen to this new author’s voice - she has something powerful to say.”Ī mesmerizing debut set in Colombia at the height Pablo Escobar's violent reign about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both “One of the most dazzling and devastating novels I’ve read in a long time.Readers of Fruit of the Drunken Tree will surely be transformed.”

Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras