Where There Was Fire

In Arias’s lush and ambitious debut, the women of a Costa Rican family wrestle with their resentments and secrets in the long shadow of a banana plantation. On a hot night in 1968, two catastrophic events alter the lives and fortunes of the Sánchez Cepeda household: José María murders his mother-in-law in front of his wife, Teresa, and one of his daughters, and the American Fruit Company’s largest plantation burns to the ground. In 1995, the surviving family members are still trying to make sense of what happened. Teresa, now about to turn 60, has continued to live in the same house in Barrio Ávila, with only her mother’s ghost for company. A dire medical diagnosis forces her estranged daughter, Lyra, to contemplate allowing Teresa to meet her grandson, Gabriel. Hanging over the familial tension is the legacy of U.S. agricultural exploitation, particularly the use of toxic pesticides on American Fruit Company crops. Arias shows a knack for arresting images (“He stumbled out into a mud-dirt road and swayed in the imaginary breeze only drunken men feel”) as he winds back and forth through time. The novel is strongest capturing the complications of love and the parental struggle not to inflict the traumas they inherited on their children. It’s a rewarding outing from an exciting new voice with a prowess for lyricism. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary. (Sept.)