Conquistadora

Starred review from March 21, 2011
Santiago (When I Was Puerto Rican) brings passion, color, and historical detail to this Puerto Rican Gone with the Wind, featuring a hard-as-nails heroine more devoted to her plantation than to any of the men in her life. Gloriosa Ana María de los Ãngeles Larragoity Cubillas Nieves de Donostia (or, more simply, Ana) grows up in southwest Spain, the willful daughter of aristocratic parents during the waning years of Spain's colonial era. Ana, a not-so-innocent convent girl, marries her best friend's fiancé's twin brother, then heads to Puerto Rico without her friend but with both twins in tow. The young men intend to make their fortunes managing a sugar plantation, but it is Ana who has the business-savvy and determination to persevere through hurricanes, slave revolts, cholera, and any other challenge the island has to offer, relying on an assortment of slaves, servants, and employees, among them mayordomo Severo Fuentes, who dares to want Ana for his wife. Santiago makes Caribbean history come alive through characters as human as they are iconic. The richness of her imagination and the lushness of her language will serve saga enthusiasts well, and she provides readers a massive panorama of plantation life, plus all you could ever want to know and more about growing sugar cane.

April 15, 2011

Or, Gone with el Viento: a Puerto Rican–set saga of forbidden love, slavery and humidity.

Gloriosa Ana María de los Angeles Larragoity Cubillas Nieves de Donostia is a handful, breast-fed by gypsies and spoiled by a small army of dispensable servants. Still, the Spanish lass has her sights on independence and accomplishments won by herself, in the manner of her conquistador ancestor, Don Hernan, spinner of tales concerning gold, limpid rivers, "unusual fruits that dangled from climbing vines" and other such good things to be found on the distant island of Puerto Rico. But how to get to that "world beyond her balcony" from Spain? Well, it being the 19th century and all, Ana has to choose the right man to take her there. Check: There's the obliging Ramon, who just happens to have a handsome brother—and from that starting point, Santiago turns this romance into a bodice-ripper and chest-heaver that wastes no time in getting hot and heavy. Early on, we find Ana exploring "the new sensations in her body, but [she] envisioned God frowning whenever she brushed her fingers against her budding breasts to feel the pleasure at the touch, so even her thoughts were forbidden." Soon enough, we find her entertaining both brothers in flagrante, or, better, in a steamy plantation full of steamy slaves and their sullen overseers. What's a nice girl to do? Well, wait as the menfolk start to drop dead one by one, the tropics being a dangerous place, watch as Tara South gets chewed up by termites and fruit bats and harbor a few regrets about having "committed the sins of adultery and fornication without seeking penance." Ah, but then come the steely arms of another man and the passage of years, and lo, the jungle is conquered—at least until the sequel.

A pot-boiler—competent enough, with an exotic setting and characters, but nothing special within its genre.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2011

Having launched her writing career with the well-regarded memoir When I Was Puerto Rican and her fiction career with America's Dream, Santiago goes for broke with this grand, sprawling novel, which starts out in 19th-century Spain. Ana Cubillas is enraptured by the diaries of an ancestor who explored Puerto Rico with Ponce de Leon. She therefore marries Ramon, who with his twin brother has inherited a sugar plantation in Puerto Rico, and convinces the brothers that their future lies in the plantation. She just wasn't prepared for the heat, the wildlife, and the slave labor. At first glance, this is engrossing and polished, without the let's-just-get-through-it writing than can mar sagas. With an eight-city tour and a reading group guide.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2011
Santiago (When I Was Puerto Rican, 1993) brings her memoir-writing talent to fiction with this extraordinary historical novel set in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico and featuring a high-handed, strong-willed woman determined to escape her boring upper-class future in Spain. When twin brothers inherit a sugar plantation in Puerto Rico, Ana marries them (who can tell them apart?), and they embark on what for the brothers is a lark but for Ana is serious business. From the start, she takes to the land and the grueling work of processing cane in the Caribbean climate, keeping the slaves inherited with the property and adding to their number over the years. She becomes the very image of a conquering hero: implacable, outspoken, demanding. Her husbands languish and fade, while Ana runs Hacienda los Gemelos without their help. The issues of social caste, slavery, and sex roles make this a fascinating read. Its an outstanding story, full of pathos, tropical sensuality, and violence, but it also poses uncomfortable moral questions readers are forced to consider. With the simmering mood of Austin Clarks The Polished Hoe (2003) and the storytelling genius of Lalita Tademy in Cane River (2001), Conquistadora is a book-group must.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)