The Mortifications by Derek Palacio

In 1980, in response to a failing economy, Fidel Castro announced that Cubans were free to leave Cuba through the Mariel port. The Mariel Boatlift transported 125,000 Cubans in 1,700 boats.

Derek Palacio's first novel The Mortifications tells the story of Soledad Encarnacion, wife to a Cuban rebel, who decided to take her twin children Ulises and Isabel on the boatlift to America for a new life. They settle in Connecticut and seem to be adjusting to their new lives, but internally they drift apart into separate prisons, never really free of Cuba or the man they left behind, father and husband Uxbal.

"Know this above all: fate is family, and family is fate."

Uxbel wanted to change the world. Soledad's shorthand records it. Isabel takes a vow of silence to prevent altering what must be, her voice poison. Ulises delves into words, the Classics, especially Aeschylus' The Oresteia, finding catharsis and ecstasy. Each follows a lonely path until recalled to Cuba, where the family is finally reunited.

"Don't forget that forgetting is a sin."

The characters struggle with their inner demons, working out their own salvation.

The novel grapples with so many ideas and character insights I had to stop reading and think. Do words change lives, and can silence protect us? What is home? What do we owe our children, our parents, what promises must be kept? What is the nature of God, of Jesus, of faith? How should we die? How should we live? How should we love each other, ourselves?

Palacio has written an amazing first novel, taking readers on a journey, revealing how life can batter and burnish the human heart until it shines.

*****

Thinking Deeper...

Catholic symbolism permeates the novel.

There is meaning behind the character's names:

• Encarnacion, incarnation in English, refers the manifestation of God in human form as Jesus Christ through the Virgin Birth. 
• Ulises, Ulysses in Latin or Odysseus in Greek, is the hero of Homer's The Odysseus, the poem about the Trojan War and the long journey home.
•  Isabel shares a name, as Ulises learns, with the wife of the conquistador Hernando de Soto, who became the first female governor of Cuba during her husband's absence. 
• Soledad is Spanish for solitude, a name given to Mary the mother of Jesus.

The tradition of mortification of the flesh is alien to me as I am from a Protestant heritage. I thought that understanding it better would shed light on the novel.

Humans live in a fallen state of grace; that is Adam decided to do what he desired instead of following God's command. Ever since, humans have needed to control their desires to be a child of God.

Self-denial is the killing of human desire which controls our emotions and enslaves us. Sometimes we use self-abuse to purge our human desire, such as wearing hair shirts or flagellation. Mortification ('mort' means death) is a way to controlling our desire, a discipline that brings freedom.

In Galatians 5 Paul writes that "the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealous, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like."

The Encarnacion family become mired by these fleshy addictions. Uxbal is an alcoholic, a factionalist who dissents against Castro's government. Soeldad has a relationship with a man not her husband, but who loves her; she loves the Uxbal she sees in Willems. As cancer ruins her body, Soledad insists on abusive sex. Isabel and Ulisesalso use sex for their own purposes, and they share jealousy over the other's parental relationships.

Isabel had listened to Uxbal's singular religious concepts, and inspired by her experience caring for the dying, decides to enter the convent.  She is asked to teach the deaf through sign language. Returning to Cuba, she plots to create her own fatherless child who might life a life unencumbered by the sins of a family. Ulises ends up choosing, Christ-like, to substitute for his father's sins.

I will be puzzling over this novel for a while.

I received a free book through a Twitter giveaway. It in no way impacts or influences my review.

19

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue immersed me into another world, an almost claustophobic closed society, reduced to one room, one patient, and little outside interaction.

An English nurse trained under Florence Nightengale during the Crimean War, Lib is hired for an unusual two week position in a poor Irish village. The village still bears the scars of the potato famine, windowless and deserted cottages ovegrown with vegetation, hungry women and children huddled in the rain.

Lib's scientific training is to be utilized in objective observation of eleven-year-old Anna who stopped eating on her last birthday four months previous. A committee has hired Lib and a nun to watch Anna every minute, in shifts, to verify that the child truly has not been eating.

The villagers are ardent Roman Catholics who along with their prayers and rosary continue to adher to local folklore, setting out saucers of milk for the wee folk. Anna's physician hopes he is watching a new level of human evolution that portends the end of starvation and war. Others believe they are watching a miracle. Very few recognize the signs of starvation.

Lib doubts what she is seeing, knows the girl must be participating in a hoax. An unbeliever, Lib distains the pious Catholicism of Anna and her community. As Lib watches Anna decline in bodily health she comes to see the girl's deep intelligence and learns that the child is willing to die if it means she can save her deceased brother from purgatory.

Good nurses follow rules, but the best know when to break them Lib decides, and with the help of
Byrne, a newsman lured by a story, she decides to break all the rules she has been taught, becoming personally involved with Anna and altering her fate. To do nothing is the deadliest sin, Byrne had told her.

This is the first time I have read Donoghue. It is a masterfully crafted novel. The novel has subtle details that place it in time. The Crimea War and Great Potato Famine are recently past. Lib reads Charles Dicken's magazine All the Year Round and George Eliot's Adam Bede. Byrne's history as a journalist reminds that while Ireland starved Parliment stood silent. Lib is allowed to slowly grow in her understanding of what she is observing, struggling with issues of faith and the nature of her professional role. Perhaps the ending is too neat, but it is gratifying wishfullfillment. We come to admire Lib and Anna captures our hearts.

The story was inspired by the stories of Fasting Girls over the centuries.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.



The Wonder
Emma Donoghue
Little, Brown, and Company
Publication Date: Sept 20, 2016
$27 hard cover
ISBN:9780316393874

From Riches to Poverty: St. Elizabeth Seton

I was given access through NetGalley to  American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton written by Joan Barthel. Seton's story is pretty amazing, but this book is not. Barthel's style is unimpressive, and the presentation of the story is sometimes confusing. The ending is especially lackluster and distanced. The book starts narrative, jumping through time, but fizzles out to an information dump with Seton's death presented in a series of daily reports. Bathel's research is extensive and I feel I know the facts of her life, and a good amount about her social setting. But I would like to better understand Seton's inner faith life and how it sustained her through the many tragedies she endured during her brief 46 years.

Elizabeth Bayley Seton was born in New York City in 1744 to a well off  Episcopalian family. Her father Richard Bayley was an innovative physician who specialized in the treatment yellow fever and who lectured in anatomy at Columbia College. He was so well thought of that even though he was a British loyalist he was allowed to remain in New York City after the British occupation of the city ended. Her mother Catherine was from the prominent Charlton family; her father was an Episcopalian minister. Catherine died in childbirth when Elizabeth was three. After the required year of mourning her father married the 18-year-old Charlotte Barclay, a member of the Roosevelt family. Charlotte was active in charity and Elizabeth accompanied her on her visitations to the poor. It was not a happy union and after five children the marriage ended. Richard went to study in London. Elizabeth went to live with her uncle Bayley.

Having lost two mothers, and abandoned by her father, Elizabeth turned to journaling, music, nature, poetry and religious contemplation for solace.


Elizabeth Bayley at age 19

At age 19 she met the love of her life, William Seton. He was the son of a successful importer. Their marriage was joyful, and she loved her father-in-law. The couple had five children together. Then William's father died. He was the real genius behind the business. The War of 1812 brought an embargo on shipping and the business failed. Plus, William had tuberculosis.

The Italian partner of the importing business offered to host William and Elizabeth in hopes that the climate would improve his illness. But upon arriving in Italy the authorities sent William to a virtual prison for thirty days out of fear he had yellow fever. William died there.

Elizabeth stayed with the business partner, visiting Roman Catholic churches and learning about the Catholic faith. Upon returning to America she pursued her interest in Catholicism, to the dismay of her friends and family.

Roman Catholicism had been illegal in America until a few years before Elizabeth's return. Protestantism prided itself on allowing believers to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, whereas in Catholicism the priest instructed believers on what to believe. The belief in the host actually becoming the body and blood of Jesus Christ was seen as superstition and the veneration of the Virgin Mary was also rejected. But Elizabeth was attracted to the beauty of the churches and worship.

Elizabeth was a mother. She had been involved in starting a charity group that raised money at a time when women didn't do business. She was friends with early feminists. She was educated, sophisticated, and worldly. She was also without an income, relying on the financial help of relatives and friends. And she desperately needed the  comfort of her faith.

She did convert to Roman Catholicism. In 1808 she became a Sister of Charity, taking  yearly renewed vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and was sent to start a school for girls in Maryland. The hardships the Sisters suffered, the many deaths from tuberculosis, the difficulty of accepting obedience to the priest in charge did not divert Seton from her chosen faith. Seton died of tuberculosis at age 41. She was canonized in 1975.

American Saint: The life of Elizabeth Seton
by Joan Barthel
Thomas Dunne Books
ISBN: 9780312571627
ISBN10: 0312571623
$26.99