THE WITCHES OF EL PASO, a deeply pleasurable read for my Frontera-raised self

THE WITCHES OF EL PASO
LUIS JARAMILLO
Atria/Primero Sueno Press
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child in this richly imagined and empowering story of motherhood, magic, and legacy in the vein of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and La Hacienda.

If you call to the witches, they will come.

1943, El Paso, teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price.

In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: So satisfying. Slow and intricate, deep and wise. I'm sure some will find the woven timelines...no definitive breaks or obtrusive tricks mark the shifts in the timeline...to be deal-breakingly imprecise, but to me that made this like an oral performace of a mythic tale. I will say that, as this is also a review of the book meant to instruct others in its merits, I've nicked a half-star off because this pigeonholes the Perfect Reader a bit overly finely.

I don't always love it when men take it upon themselves to write about motherhood. Author Jaramillo manages to do this feat without making the commonest mistakes men fall into: flattening the narrative scope into a litany of caretaking chores or glossing over these same chores. The effect is the same either end of the spectrum. It makes the work of motherhood into insignificant triviality. I hasten to add that many women writers have done the same, Gone Girl being a notable example. In this book, caretaking, mothering, is literally everywhere and yet this didn't obtrude into my consciousness until I was reviewing my notes before writing this review.

That's well-done prosody...I'm in the sounds of the story not in the structure of it. As these are the sounds of la frontera, where I grew up, I fell right in and did not notice it. Very well done indeed, Author Jaramillo.

I don't think any one thing worked more in favor of the book than Nena's manner of explaining the past to her modern, harried granddaughter, not as a place of beautiful memories but of deeds undine and consequences unmet. Business to be finished dominates every life, none moreso than that of the oldest among us. I resonated like a struck bell to this thread of the tapestry woven for me.

As a way to add some occult flavor and Hispanic culture to your #Deathtober reading, this works very well. As a lovely story of the intense bonds of a loving family woman, forced by bitter circumstance to choose actions permanent and irremediable, making amends as best she can, it's gloriously satisfying.

Read soonest.