Macmillan Caribbean Writers: The Festival of San Joaquin
Luz Marina, jailed for the murder of her violent husband, returns to her home village, hoping to leave the past behind and win back custody of her children. But first she must reckon with the ill-will of her former employer and mother-in-law, the wealthy landowner Doña Catalina, who plots to ruin Luz Marinas chances of rebuilding her life. This novel, set among the mestizo Spanish communities of rural Belize, gives a sympathetic and moving portrait of peasant life.Zee Edgell is Belizes foremost writer, and the first Belizean to reach an international audience for her literature. A journalist, she has served as Director of the Department of Womens Affairs of Belize and Head of the Womens Bureau of Belize; Secretary to the Governing Board for Concerned Women For Family Planning in Dacca, Bangladesh; and UNICEF Consultant to The Somali Womens Democratic Organization in Mogadishu, Somali. She currently teaches creative writing at Kent State University in Ohio. Her other novels are Beka Lamb (winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize), In Times Like These and Time and the River.Zee Edgells style seems at first quite bald and unadorned, but develops its own cadence as the narrative starts to mesh together. This is a warm, satisfying story, a testament to struggle and hope which manages to draw in, quite skillfully and simply, wider themes such as environmental profiteering and the role of the evangelical church as aspects of the communitys life. The New Internationalist A very fine addition to the canon of novels from the Caribbean by women and to the literature of the region itself. The Caribbean Writer
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