EBOOK
About
On the first day of the millennium, a small town gathers to witness a miracle and unravel its portents for the century: the mysterious reappearance of a lost infant, Pajarita. Later, as a young woman in the capital city - Montevideo, brimming with growth and promise - Pajarita begins a lineage of fiercely independent women. Her daughter, Eva, survives a brutal childhood to pursue her dreams as a rebellious poet and along the hazardous precipices of erotic love. Eva's daughter, Salomé, driven by an unrelenting idealism, commits clandestine acts that will end in tragedy as unrest sweeps Uruguay. But what saves them all is the fierce fortifying connection between mother and daughter that will bring them together to face the future.
From Perón's glittering Buenos Aires to the rustic hills of Rio de Janeiro, from the haven of a corner butchershop to U.S. embassy halls, the Firielli family traverses a changing South America and the uncharted terrain of their relationships with one another. PAJARITA
Uno The Girl Who Appeared in a Tree
Dos Strange Wires and Stolen Sacraments
EVA
Tres Voices, Faces, Wineglass, Table, Words
Cuatro The Art of Making Oneself Anew
Cinco Across Black Water, a Secret Sea
SALOMÉ
Seis The World Is Pushed by Many Hands
Siete Steel Rabbits and Songs That Melt Snow
Ocho Keens, Howls, Hunger for the Sun
Nueve Soft Tongues by the Millions
Acknowledgments
Uno
The Girl Who Appeared in a Tree
When Salomé finally wrote to her daughter-by then a young woman, a stranger, thousands of miles away-she said everything that disappears is somewhere, as if physics could turn back time and save them both. It was a maxim she'd learned in school: energy is neither lost nor created. Nothing truly goes away. People are energy too, and when you cannot see them they've just changed places, or changed forms, or sometimes both. There is the exception of black holes, which swallow things without leaving even the slightest trace, but Salomé let her pen keep moving as if they did not exist.
Her skirts were wet and clung to her legs and her pen moved and moved without her hand seeming to push it, forming the spires and spikes and loops of cursive words, sharp t's and j's, y's and g's with knots at their base as though to tie themselves together, tie women back together, and as she wrote the loops grew large, as if more rope were needed to bind what had blown apart inside her, and not only inside her but around her, and before her, in her mother's days, her grandmother's days, the hordes of stories Salomé had not lived through but that came to her as stories do-copiously, uninvited, sometimes in an easy sprawl, sometimes with a force that could drown you or spit you up to heaven. Other stories had never come; they went untold. They left hollow silence in their place. But if it was true that everything that disappeared was somewhere, then even those still breathed and glittered, somewhere, in the hidden corners of the world.
The first day of a century is never like other days, and less so in Tacuarembó, Uruguay, a speck of a town, known for starting centuries with some peculiar miracle or another. And so the townspeople were primed that morning, ready, curious, tingling, some drunk, some praying, some drinking more, some stealing gropes under bushes, some leaning into s
From Perón's glittering Buenos Aires to the rustic hills of Rio de Janeiro, from the haven of a corner butchershop to U.S. embassy halls, the Firielli family traverses a changing South America and the uncharted terrain of their relationships with one another. PAJARITA
Uno The Girl Who Appeared in a Tree
Dos Strange Wires and Stolen Sacraments
EVA
Tres Voices, Faces, Wineglass, Table, Words
Cuatro The Art of Making Oneself Anew
Cinco Across Black Water, a Secret Sea
SALOMÉ
Seis The World Is Pushed by Many Hands
Siete Steel Rabbits and Songs That Melt Snow
Ocho Keens, Howls, Hunger for the Sun
Nueve Soft Tongues by the Millions
Acknowledgments
Uno
The Girl Who Appeared in a Tree
When Salomé finally wrote to her daughter-by then a young woman, a stranger, thousands of miles away-she said everything that disappears is somewhere, as if physics could turn back time and save them both. It was a maxim she'd learned in school: energy is neither lost nor created. Nothing truly goes away. People are energy too, and when you cannot see them they've just changed places, or changed forms, or sometimes both. There is the exception of black holes, which swallow things without leaving even the slightest trace, but Salomé let her pen keep moving as if they did not exist.
Her skirts were wet and clung to her legs and her pen moved and moved without her hand seeming to push it, forming the spires and spikes and loops of cursive words, sharp t's and j's, y's and g's with knots at their base as though to tie themselves together, tie women back together, and as she wrote the loops grew large, as if more rope were needed to bind what had blown apart inside her, and not only inside her but around her, and before her, in her mother's days, her grandmother's days, the hordes of stories Salomé had not lived through but that came to her as stories do-copiously, uninvited, sometimes in an easy sprawl, sometimes with a force that could drown you or spit you up to heaven. Other stories had never come; they went untold. They left hollow silence in their place. But if it was true that everything that disappeared was somewhere, then even those still breathed and glittered, somewhere, in the hidden corners of the world.
The first day of a century is never like other days, and less so in Tacuarembó, Uruguay, a speck of a town, known for starting centuries with some peculiar miracle or another. And so the townspeople were primed that morning, ready, curious, tingling, some drunk, some praying, some drinking more, some stealing gropes under bushes, some leaning into s