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 for ever.
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 and greed.
Brimming with ancestral spirits, omens and the forces of nature, John Manuel Arias's extraordinary debut novel weaves a brilliant tapestry of love – lost and found again – and, ultimately, redemption. John Manuel Arias is a queer, Costa Rican American poet and writer. He has lived in Washington, DC; Brooklyn, New York; and in San José, Costa Rica, with his grandmother and four ghosts. Where There Was Fire is his first novel. A stunning new voice in fiction: a novel of love, murder and greed set in Costa Rica and the US.
A Costa Rican family's generational trauma impacts their descendants in ways they don't fully understand because of secrets that have never been shared. Adriana Sananes adopts both Spanish and English accents throughout the complex dynamics of five generations who were affected by the exploitation of the Great American Fruit Company. The corruption of the U.S. banana company left many Costa Rican
