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The Flamenco Academy
Sarah Bird
From the author of the widely praised The Yokota Officers Club, a superbly alive novel about two young American women caught up in the fevered excitement of the flamenco revival sweeping the Southwest.
Knopf
June 2006
400 pages
ISBN: 1400040841
Hardcover
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Fiction
The place is Albuquerque. Cyndi Rae Hrncir, called Rae,
seventeen and shy, is twice spellbound, first by high school
bad girl Didi (“Dirty Deeds”) Steinberg, already embarked on
a search for stardom, then by a devastatingly handsome young
flamenco guitarist, Tomás Montenegro. Soon the girls are in
college, where they abandon themselves to the disciplines
and demands of the university’s flamenco academy and to the
hypnotic storytelling of their teacher, Doña Carlota,
Tomás’s great-aunt. While never losing the insistent beat of
the dance, Doña Carlota mesmerizes her students with the
complexly embroidered story of her childhood growing up
among the cave-dwelling Gypsies of Andalusia. She initiates
them into the traditions, the rhythms, and the steps of
flamenco puro, with its central imperative: “Dame la
verdad”—Give me the truth. Locked in a volatile triangle and driven by obsession—Didi’s
with stardom, Rae’s with Tomás, Tomás’s with his mysterious
heritage—these three emerge as the brightest stars on the
New World flamenco scene, while secrets and desires,
longings and betrayals pulse just beneath the glittering
surface of their compelling performances. A sense of passion and danger has always surrounded
flamenco. In The Flamenco Academy, Sarah Bird delivers a
novel with a sense of history and character that matches the
drama of the dance it so brilliantly celebrates.
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