Late Night Library

Late Night Library


Chantel Acevedo - The Distant Marvels

June 23, 2015

Late Night Conversation, hosted by Paul Martone

Featured guest: Chantel Acevedo

Listen to the episode here:

PURCHASE THE DISTANT MARVELS HERE (http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781609452520 ?aff=lnl)

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Maria Sirena tells stories. She does it for money—she was a favorite in the cigar factory where she worked as a lectora—and for love, spinning gossamer tales out of her own past for the benefit of friends, neighbors, and family. But now, like a modern-day Scheherazade, she will be asked to tell one last story so that eight women can keep both hope and themselves alive.

Cuba, 1963. Hurricane Flora, one of the deadliest hurricanes in recorded history, is bearing down on the island. Seven women have been forcibly evacuated from their homes and herded into the former governor’s mansion, where they are watched over by another woman, a young soldier of Castro’s new Cuba named Ofelia. Outside the storm is raging and the floodwaters are rising. In a single room on the top floor of the governor’s mansion, Maria Sirena begins to tell the incredible story of her childhood during Cuba’s Third War of Independence; of her father Augustin, a ferocious rebel; of her mother, Lulu, an astonishing woman who fought, loved, dreamed, and suffered as fiercely as her husband. Stories, however, have a way of taking on a life of their own, and transported by her story’s momentum, Maria Sirena will reveal more about herself than she or anyone ever expected.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chantel Acevedo’s novels include Love and Ghost Letters (St. Martin's Press), which won the Latino International Book Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book of the Year, Song of the Red Cloak, a historical novel for young adults, A Falling Star (Carolina Wren Press), winner of the Doris Bakwin Award, and National Bronze Medal IPPY Award, and The Distant Marvels, (Europa Editions). Her fiction and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Poetry Review, North American Review, andChattahoochee Review, among others. 
Acevedo is currently an Associate Professor of English in the MFA Program of the University of Miami.