Treasures in Heaven
To escape a scandal that sent her husband into exile, Estela abandons the safety of her hometown and travels with her infant son to the roaring nineteenth-century metropolis of Mexico City. Hoping to begin her life anew, Estela declares herself a widow and goes in search of her former lover – and only true love. Estela's romantic ideals are quickly destroyed; her lover is married, and Estela realizes that to be a woman in Mexico "without family was to be derided, degraded, and disgraced. Born into misery, a woman brought her children into it, ate it with her tortillas, and was buried in it."
When Estela is introduced to an elegantly independent creature named La Señorita, her combination of naivete and intelligence, individual will and compliance is enough to intrigue La Señorita. Born into wealth, and refusing to relinquish control of her considerable funds, La Señorita is a protofeminist whose cause is to fight for "the plight of women in Mexico." Together, the two start an increasingly dangerous movement for social change that foreshadows the Mexican Revolution. It is Estela's ability to take satisfaction from "the repair of the world" that teaches her that the promise of treasures in heaven should never outweigh the gift of a life that is really lived.
Readers also enjoyed
Kathleen Alcalá
Kathleen Alcalá (born 1954) is the author of a short-story collection and three novels set in the American Southwest and nineteenth-century Mexico and a collection of essays. She teaches creative writing at workshops and programs in Washington state and elsewhere, including Seattle University, the University of New Mexico and Richard Hugo House. Alcalá is also a co-founder of and contributing editor to The Raven Chronicles. A play based on her novel, Spirits of the Ordinary, was produced by The Miracle Theatre of Portland, Oregon. She served on the board of Richard Hugo House and the advisory boards of Con Tinta, Field’s End and the Centrum Writers Conference. She is the winner of several awards for her writing, including an Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship in 2007.
More books by Kathleen Alcalá
