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Summary
Summary
Winner of the 1998 American Book Award
Spanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto Clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.
Author Notes
Sandra Benitez 's first novel was A Place Where the Sea Remembers . She grew up in El Salvador, attended high school and college in Missouri, and now divides her time between Edina, Minnesota, where she teaches creative writing, and Mexico.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"In Salvador, coffee steams while it sits," warns the epigraph to this piercing tale of two Salvadoran families. In El Salvador, coffee provides the way of life. Savored by both plantation owners and poverty-stricken pickers, the brew is as much an elixir as it is a divider of the social classes. This addictive novel from Benitez (A Place Where the Sea Remember) follows three generations of the Parietos clan and the family they work for, the Contreras, through the knotted complexities of Salvadoran power and politics from the 1930s to the '70s. Two women are the catalysts: Mercedes Prieto, a pacifist Pipil Indian and wife of a poor coffee picker, survives the destruction of her village and the kidnapping of her son by the National Guard; Elena de Contreras, matriarch of the coffee plantation, harbors a wounded and bitter heart. They, and the children they bear, are locked together by love and loyalty as well as torn apart by betrayals as they are involved in the country's struggles. For all its compassion and anger, Benitez's saga is surprisingly free of propaganda: both classes are capable of deceit and greed, fidelity and kindness. Her Spanish-sprinkled, elegant prose is mesmerizing in its simplicity and frankness. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Drawing on her own childhood memories and family history, Benitez (author of the acclaimed first novel A Place Where the Sea Remembers, 1993) chronicles the day-to-day lives of three generations of women in El Salvador, interwoven with the complex and volatile political history of the country. The intricate relationships between women of great wealth and those who serve them unfold over time to reveal the insidious and often violently destructive impact of social, political, and economic structures. Bitter Grounds is a story of private lives and intimate betrayals, class differences, and unceasing political upheavals from 1933 through 1977. Vivid characters highlight the extreme differences in security, education, resources, and opportunity between the wealthy property and business owners and el pueblo, the people. Steeped in intrigue and rich in detail, this is a beautiful work of fiction that reveals the complicated roots of human drama and lays bare the truth of a troubled nation. A gentle infusion of Spanish words and phrases--always translated--adds to the enjoyment of Benitez's fluid style. --Grace Fill
Kirkus Review
A luminously rendered second novel from the author of A Place Where the Sea Remembers (1993). Here, memorable pairs of mothers and daughters, caught up in the violence of recent Salvadoran history, live, love, and die for their passions. Ben¡tez excels at capturing the textures of landscape, of class and period, and tells here a multigenerational saga shaped by politics but refreshingly free of polemic. Her upper-class characters are as fairly delineated as her peasants, as she tells the story of three generations of mothers and daughters whose lives intersect. She begins with the infamous massacre of 1932, when Indian peasants suspected of being communists were slaughtered in the countryside. Thirteen-year-old Jacinta and her mother, Mercedes Prieto, are the only survivors of the attack in which their home is burned and Mercedes's husband killed. The two struggle to survive. When Mercedes begins working for wealthy landowners Elena and Ernesto de Contreras, however, life improves. Elena, a more enlightened product of her class and times, has her own sadness: On the eve of daughter Magda's wedding, she discovers Cecilia, her best friend, in bed with Ernesto. Hurt and angry, she vows never to see Cecilia again, which of course has repercussions in a story that suffers from foreshadowing. As the country experiences coups and falling coffee prices, the women try to live normal lives but find it impossible. Jacinta's first love is killed for being a union supporter; Alma, her daughter by a married man, becomes a revolutionary and dies in a botched kidnapping; and Magda, who employs Jacinta and raises daughter Flor, along with Alma, loses her husband and son-in-law in the same kidnapping. Exile in Miami with a hint of a happy ending as the war heats up in the late '70s is the only option for Jacinta, Magda, and her family. A sometimes schematic but always vivid chronicle of strong women facing the challenges of living in sad and violent times. (Author tour)
Library Journal Review
Centering on a letter that remains unopened for 26 years, Benítez'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 servantsand, 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. Benítez'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, LJ 9/1/93), this work is another welcome addition to the growing body of Latina literature.Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
