Up the Creek Book Club
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© 2000 Kathy Craig |
Bitter Grounds
by Sandra Benitez
January 2000
Synopsis
"Bitter Grounds depicts the luxurious lives of the wealthy in Salvadoran society through the Contreras family, owners of a coffee plantation. Elena de Contreras travels to Europe with her daughter to select wardrobes, spends idle time at luncheons and teas with society friends, and supports her daughter in opening an expensive gift shop in town. Yet when betrayal rocks Elena's protected and pampered world, she reveals an iron will no one had glimpsed in her before. Their lives are a stark contrast to the lives of the coffee pickers, who must live a hard-scrabble existence in close proximity to the privileged elite.
Jacinta Prieto comes from such a background, and as housekeeper to the Contreras family, is privy to their innermost secrets. Jacinta has secrets of her own, including a love affair with a married man whose identity she risks all to conceal. By interweaving the stories of these women, Benitez draws dramatic differences and surprising parallels in their worlds, evoking their passions and revealing their hatred with amazing empathy." (Publisher)
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Reviews
- "It is a story of passion, politics, death, and love, written with suspense: a country's tragic story seen by four strong women. This is the kind of book that fills your dreams for weeks." (Isabel Allende)
- "Centering on a letter that remains unopened for 26 years, Bentez's impressive saga follows the intertwined lives of three generations of Salvadoran women, the very rich and the very poor, friends and mothers and daughters, mistresses and servants and, finally, oppressors and victims and guerrillas. Their lives are played out against the backdrop of the ever-present radio soap-opera serial and the violence and corruption of the police state and civil war of 20th-century El Salvador. Bentez's prose is rich and fluid; one tastes and smells the world of Jacinta and Magda and their mothers and daughters. Like her first novel (A Place Where the Sea Remembers), this work is another welcome addition to the growing body of Latina literature." (Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield College Library, McMinnville, Oregon)
- "An elegant epic...Benitez is a remarkable storyteller." (The Denver Post)
Book Club Rating and Comments
If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.
Other Books by Sandra Benitez
- 'A Place Where the Sea Remembers'
- 'The Weight of All Things'