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- Verified Buyer
In the interest of full disclosure, my mother was born in Puerto Rico, and her family went back to the 1800's just like the family in this book. I saw the ghosts of many of the characters and whispers of the themes that ran through my mother's family told so clearly in Ferre's words. A history such as this comes down to my generation, the generation of Manuel's never-born children, as a mixture of sepia prints of ladies in white linen dresses and gentlemen in boater hats and their stories - part fact, part mythology. And we will never which parts are which. So much from the time when these ancestors owned lands, were the lawyers and doctors, wrote poetry and treatises printed by genteel, non-commercial publishers, has been lost to greedy semi-related family members who hung on to the bitter end, or to the Turkmen who emptied priceless libraries and tossed "old fashioned" ebony and mahogany altars and furniture from the original houses in Spain. Just as in the book, my mother's generation, born in the 30s and 40s, preferred to leave the island and join the ranks of young professionals with degrees from respected American universities to practice among their 19950s up and coming professional.I would have enjoyed the book even if I didn't share the history, and I recommend it to anyone interested in Caribbean history.
