Pola (Keera in her past life from Africa) has recently escaped her job as a slave breeder from the first plantation in Puerto Rico, but because of an injury, she ends up on another plantation where she gets to be a dressmaker and begins the slow and painful recovery of opening up her heart to a life that was all but denied for her. Along the way, she discovers a new family, but can she at last heal her heart to truly live again?
In A WOMAN OF ENDURANCE by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, there is a focus on Pola's heart throughout her life on the second plantation. There is no rushing the plot or the healing process. Instead, the reader begins to heal little by little with Pola, watching her attempt to transform into a different woman. A WOMAN OF ENDURANCE does not tell an easy story, but instead, it asks the impossible: to take and enjoy moments even while living in hell.
For readers of THE BAREFOOT QUEEN by Ildefonso Falcones as well as GINNY GALL by Charlie Smith, A WOMAN OF ENDURANCE by Dahlma LLanos-Figueroa will be a sensational read of time and place, portraying salient details of slavery that spare no horrors. At the same time, this novel doesn't veer off into the category of "trauma porn." Pola's growth is definitely astounding and the author, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa doesn't rush through her character arc but instead moves slowly, similar to catching and treating a wounded bird.
For those who are seeking a novel that takes place outside the United States of America and that focuses on the experience of slavery but doesn't glamorize it, as well as focuses on woman's strength through impossible odds, then A WOMAN OF ENDURANCE by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa will definitely be a treat for the seekers.
A Woman of Endurance, set in nineteenth-century Puerto Rican plantation society, follows Pola, a deeply spiritual African woman who is captured and later sold for the purpose of breeding future slaves. The resulting babies are taken from her as soon as they are born. Pola loses the faith that has guided her and becomes embittered and defensive. The dehumanizing violence of her life almost destroys her. But this is not a novel of defeat but rather one of survival, regeneration, and reclamation of common humanity.
Readers are invited to join Pola in her journey to healing. From the sadistic barbarity of her first experiences, she moves on to receive compassion and support from a revitalizing new community. Along the way, she learns to recognize and embrace the many faces of love—a mother’s love, a daughter’s love, a sister’s love, a love of community, and the self-love that she must recover before she can offer herself to another. It is ultimately, a novel of the triumph of the human spirit even under the most brutal of conditions.
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