First published 1994
Roger Graetz grew up in a Boston suburb with Flor de Mayo, a young Guatemalan orphan his grandmother sent to work as his family's maid. His aristocratic Guatemalan mother had brought this arrangement into their household, creating an unusual bond between the privileged boy and the beautiful servant girl. Years pass. Roger becomes an adult living his American life while Flor returns to Guatemala to run an orphanage. Then news arrives that shocks him: someone has murdered Flor in the 1980s violence consuming her homeland. Roger travels back to Guatemala, driven by grief and questions he cannot answer from Boston. There he reconnects with Luis Moya, a friend from childhood who shares his need to understand what happened. Together they begin investigating Flor's death, but their search becomes something larger. They find themselves piecing together the entire arc of her life story, uncovering truths that will change how Roger sees his past and himself.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Boston, Guatemala
Period: 1980s
448 pages · Paperback · Faber and Faber