The Aguero Sisters

Amazon.com

In this novel of family history and myth, Christina Garcia gives us Reina and Constancia Aguero, sisters who grew up in Cuba, but who haven't talked in thirty years--not since Constancia snuck out of Cuba and crossed the water to the United States, where she assimilated into her adopted country's culture as completely and deeply as she could. The beautiful and charismatic Reina, meanwhile, stayed in Cuba where she became a skilled electrician and a staunch supporter of la revolucion. The long-estranged sisters are finally heading toward a reunion, and as they come together their own stories and the legacy of their scientist-parents is told and retold in an elegantly written novel that investigates the several natures of identity--personal, familial, and even national.

From Library Journal

Garcia's magisterial new work opens with a murder: in Cuba's shimmering Zapata Swamp, Blanca Aguero turns in time to see her naturalist husband, Ignacio, point a gun at her and pull the trigger. At the heart of the novel that then unfolds are the two daughters of the ill-fated couple: sensuous, statuesque Reina, a master electrician who cheerfully serves the revolution until a certain inexplicable restlessness?and a nasty encounter with lightning?send her into exile, and the carefully preserved Constancia, who hates leaving New York for Miami when her timid husband retires but whose homemade Cuerpo de Cuba emollients really take off. Constancia has a problem, though; one morning, she awakens not with her face but her long-dead mother's, a reminder that we carry with us?indeed, we are?our past. Ultimately, this is less a novel about two sisters than an evocation of Cuba itself. In less capable hands, the richly imagined details would swamp the sense of story, but Garcia (Dreaming in Cuban, LJ 3/1/92) shapes her material beautifully, keeping the reader with her until the end. Highly recommended. -?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.