Maria Sirena tells stories. She does it for money—she was a
favorite in the cigar factory where she worked as a
lettora—and for love, spinning gossamer tales out of
her own past for the benefit of friends, neighbors, and
family. But now, like a modern-day Scheherazade, she will be
asked to tell one last story so that eight women can keep
both hope and themselves alive.
Cuba, 1963.
Hurricane Flora, one of the deadliest hurricanes in recorded
history, is bearing down on the island. Seven women have
been forcibly evacuated from their homes and herded into the
former governor’s mansion, where they are watched over by
another woman, a young soldier of Castro’s new Cuba named
Ofelia. Outside the storm is raging and the floodwaters are
rising. In a single room on the top floor of the governor’s
mansion, Maria Sirena begins to tell the incredible story of
her childhood during Cuba’s Third War of Independence; of
her father Augustin, a ferocious rebel; of her mother, Lulu,
an astonishing woman who fought, loved, dreamed, and
suffered as fiercely as her husband. Stories, however, have
a way of taking on a life of their own, and transported by
her story’s momentum, Maria Sirena will reveal more about
herself than she or anyone ever
expected.
Chantel Acevedo’s The Distant
Marvels is an epic adventure tale, a family saga, a love
story, a stunning historical account of armed struggle
against oppressors, and a long tender plea for forgiveness.
It is, finally, a life-affirming novel about the kind of
love that lasts a lifetime and the very art of storytelling
itself.
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