The Volcano Daughters by Gina Maria Balibrera

 

The Volcano Daughters by Gina Maria Balibrera.

Published 3rd October 2024 by Oneworld.

From the cover of the book:

A searingly original novel about sisterhood, art, and a community of women who refuse to be silenced.

Nine-year-old Graciela is raised in the shadow of El Salvador's Izalco volcano, until the day she is taken to the capital city by the country's fearsome – and fearsomely superstitious – dictator, who believes her to be a muse capable of foreseeing the future.

There, Graciela meets Consuelo, the sister she never knew existed. Consuelo is everything she is not – volatile, dreamy and teenaged – yet despite their differences, the sisters form an unlikely bond. When the dictator's brutality is finally unleashed, El Salvador is forever changed. Graciela and Consuelo survive the massacre, but most of their community are not so lucky.

From San Salvador to Los Angeles, Paris to San Francisco, the sisters create a new future for themselves. But the story of those they left behind is not yet over. Their voices, once just a whimper, now shout louder than ever. Listen.

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Nine-year-old Graciela and her friends are raised in a village that lies in the shadow of El Salvador's Izalco volcano. Her happiness is shattered when she is dragged from the arms of her mother and taken to the home of her late father in the capital city, San Salvador.

Here she meets Consuelo, the older sister she did not know existed, and learns that her fate is to become the orcale of El Salvador's capricious dictator. The sisters struggle with the sacrifices they are expected to make, and long for freedom, finding comfort in each other's presence. But disaster comes when El Salvador's tyrant unleashes his violence on the country, and those they love best.

The Volcano Daughters is a powerful story of two sisters, set against the backdrop of El Salvador's violent past, covering the period of 1914 to 1942. Its format is somewhat unconventional, being a blend of historical fiction that shines a light on the country's dark past, through the experiences of the sisters, and a magical realism retelling through the voices of their fellow 'volcano daughters', who are victims of a wide-spread massacre born of the dictator's wrath.

The first part of the novel concerns itself with the villagers in the shadow of the Izalco volcano, then moves onto the course of the lives of the sisters in San Salvador, and beyond to the places that the tide of history takes them to in the wake of the massacre - Los Angeles, San Francisco and Paris. Throughout, the voices of Lourdes, Maria, Cora and Lucia, who have become all-seeing spirits (and sometime ghosts), guide the story, taking up the role of narrators through their own storytelling passages and conversations. 

It did take me a while to get my head around the story, as the text is Spanish heavy, and the pace is quite rambling, but an intriguing pattern takes shape. Consuelo and Graciela's parts in the tale are overshadowed by the legacy of the trauma that follows them through their lives, which makes the book pretty hard hitting, but there are moments of tenderness and love amongst the pain. There is also plenty of social history to enjoy from their poignant journeys, not least when it comes to El Salvador, and I found myself going down a lot of rabbit holes to discover more about its political history. The sections set in Hollywood and Paris are especially atmospheric, and Balibrera's exploration of the nature of art is fascinating.

For me, what makes this book is the way Lourdes, Maria, Cora and Lucia dip in and out with their observations on the lives of the sisters, filling in parts of the story where Consuelo and Graciela do not have the words to tell their own truths. I really enjoyed how their separate personalities, and strength of character, shine through these sections, and they save the story from becoming too grim with their irreverence and humour in what is ultimately, a terribly sad chronicle. 

There are shades of Isabel Allende in this novel which is nice to see in a debut. I look forward to seeing how the writing career of Gina Maria Balibrera develops.

The Volcano Daughters is available to buy now in hardcover and ebook formats.

Thank you to Oneworld for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

GINA MARÍA BALIBRERA earned an MFA in Prose from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. She's been awarded grants from Aspen Words, Tin House, the Rackham Institute, and the Periplus Collective, as well as a Tyson Award, the Aura Estrada Prize, and the Under the Volcano Sandra Cisneros Fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Boston Review, Latino Book Review, Pleiades, The Wandering Song: An Anthology of the Central American Diaspora, and elsewhere. She lives in Ann Arbor, MI, with her family.