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Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award
 
A fableistic, "beautifully crafted, poetic" debut novel of enormous power and grace about a sister trying to hold back her brother from the edge of the abyss for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Tommy Orange (The New York Times Book Review).
In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother's passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa's own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be.
As the siblings reckon with generational and ancestral trauma, set against the indignities of present-day prejudice, other strange hauntings begin to stalk these pages: their mother's ghost kicks her heels against the walls; Rufina's vanished child creeps into her arms at night; and above all this, watching over the siblings, a genderless, flea-bitten angel remains hell-bent on saving what can be saved.
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    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2021

      DEBUT In Figueroa's seductive, lyrically wrought debut, as much dreamscape as story, the mother of Rufina and Rafa has been dead for months but haunts them still at their house in Ciudad de Tres Hermanas. Though nearly 30 and world-traveled, Rafa was always held close by his mother and cannot imagine living without her, so 28-year-old Rufina makes him a bet. That weekend, if they can earn enough money performing in the plaza to leave town, he must embrace life. Otherwise, he can do as he pleases. In childhood, the siblings worked the plaza as part of a live installation devised by the Explorer, a charmer who insinuated himself into the family and wreaked havoc. Now, as clueless tourists trot by, Rafa exercises his special magic--reading meaning into shadows--and Rufina sings seductively, watched over by a ragged angel and a worshipful young policeman. She's as troubled as Rafa, still imagining she has the baby lost long ago in childbirth. Family and ancestral history are bound tightly with immediate events as the weekend moves toward its fateful last hours. VERDICT The narrative can get a little lost in the gorgeous, reflective language but remains an absorbing study of memory and grief.

      Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from November 1, 2020
      Figueroa's curious and dazzling first novel features a family in which love has been tragically twisted by traumas old and new. The story takes place over the weekend during which sister Rufina and brother Rafa grieve for their recently deceased mother, Rosalinda, even as her ghost lingers. With Rafa heading into peril, Rufina, in a bid to save his life, proposes a bet stipulating that over that fateful weekend they will make enough money for Rafa to get away from his troubles by performing a strange tableau with imaginary instruments and disintegrating clothes, a stratagem devised by the evil ""explorer"" of the title, for the tourists in their dusty New Mexican town. Certain entities watch over Rufina, standing ready to support her when needed, including their adobe house; her actual, scruffy guardian angel; an old suitor who also happens to be the strangely endearing town cop; and the Grandmothers to All. Figueroa's omniscient, second-person narration creates an intimacy while the hypnotic rhythm of her prose and evocative mystical elements invoke an archetypal sense that is at once out-of-time and thoroughly contemporary as we grudgingly recognize our own precarious epoch.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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