In the StorySan Isidro
In San Isidro, the Day of the Dead also awakens memories of those who might have survived. In 1910, Remedios Salvatierra prepares the altar, receives the portraits, and keeps the great family ledger. Every object must find its place. But this year’s accounts do not all describe the same absences. Some of the dead seem to have lived, elsewhere, a life their loved ones recognize.
Open the novel ↗A moment in the opening pages
Remedios straightened it once, then again. The cardboard had warped over the years and would not stay against the whitewashed brick, even with two pins. In the photograph, Silvestre posed in an oversized jacket, chin raised as though he had been caught just as he was about to object to something. He had vanished seven years earlier. No one in San Isidro had seen him dead.Read the excerpt ↗