Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras is semi-autobiographical fiction in the vein of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and is a masterful debut novel set in Columbia during the time it was controlled by 128 paramilitary groups, including Pablo Escobar, the drug kingpin. The novel is told in dual points of view, switching between that of a seven-year-old girl, Chula, and that of her family’s thirteen-year-old maid, Petrona. Chula’s family (mother, father who works for an oil company, and older sister, Cassandra) live in a gated community while Petrona leaves her family in the slums and travels to work as a live-in maid for the wealthy family. Chula and Petrona develop an incongruous relationship that nearly brings them down. Guerillas and paramilitary groups run rampant through the hills where Petrona’s family lives, and she gets involved in passing messages back and forth for them and even helps set up the kidnapping of Chula and Cassandra. The girls escape, though.

Eventually, Chula’s father is captured by guerrillas who take over the oil field where he works and he’s held captive. Fearing that he’s been killed and also afraid for their lives, Chula, Cassandra, and their mother emigrate to the United States where Chula writes Petrona. 

This book beautifully captures the points of view of two children in very different emotional and physical circumstances and shows their common humanity. The violence of Columbia during that time is not avoided but not glamorized either. The book is touching, yet horrifying. I liked it enough to immediately order the author’s memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds.

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Fruit of the Drunken Tree  (Vintage, July 31, 2018) is available through:

Your local independent bookseller      |     Amazon     |     Barnes & Noble

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