A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER
From the author
of the "original, politically daring and passionately written"
(Vogue) novel Fruit of the
Drunken Tree comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir
reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy.
For Ingrid Rojas
Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political
violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her
mother's fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise.
Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community
healer gifted with what the family called "the secrets" the
power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move
the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit "the secrets,"
Rojas Contreras' mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her
ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even
the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water.
This legacy had
always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until,
while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a
head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial
memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened
before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia,
too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to "the
secrets."
In 2012, spurred by
a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge
to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss,
Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter
Nono's remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often
hilarious guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her
Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid
colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family
into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift,
and those who are convinced they are a curse.
Interweaving family
stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected
Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the
bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the
incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous
testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an
invitation to embrace the extraordinary.