Where There Was Fire
A lush and atmospheric novel about three generations of a Costa Rican family wrestling with a deadly secret, from rising literary star John Manuel Arias
“An exciting new voice with a prowess for lyricism.” ―Publishers Weekly
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A B&N DISCOVER PICK * A GMA BUZZ PICK * MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2023: CrimeReads, Debutiful, Good Morning America, Library Journal, Zibby Mag, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more!
Costa Rica, 1968.When a lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company's most lucrative banana plantation burning all evidence of a massive cover-up, the future of Teresa Cepeda Valverde's family is changed forever.
Now, twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are still picking up the pieces. Lyra wants nothing to do with Teresa, but is desperate to find out what happened to her family that fateful night. Teresa, haunted by a missing husband and the bitter ghost of her mother, Amarga, is unable to reconcile the past. What unfolds is a story of a mother and daughter trying to forgive what they do not yet understand, and the mystery at the heart of one family's rupture, steeped in machismo, jealousy, labor uprisings, and the havoc wreaked by banana plantations in Central America.
Brimming with ancestral spirits, omens, and the anthropomorphic forces of nature, John Manuel Arias weaves a brilliant tapestry of love, loss, secrets, and redemption. Set in Costa Rica between 1968 and the mid-1990s,Where There Was Firepaints a vivid portrait of the ways in which agribusiness and international exploitation are intertwined with one family's fate.
ABOUT
John Manuel Arias is a queer, Costa Rican American poet and writer, and the National Bestselling author of Where There Was Fire, a Good Morning America Buzz Pick and Barnes & Noble Discover Pick. A Canto Mundo fellow & an alumnus of the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, his prose and poetry have been published in The Kenyon Review, PANK, The Rumpus, and Akashic Books. He has lived in Washington D.C., Brooklyn New York, and in San José, Costa Rica with his grandmother and four ghosts.