March 14, 2016
Kerney (Born Again) explores Guatemala-U.S. relations over the entire 20th century as told by four different Americans living in the tumultuous Central American country. In separate sections ordered chronologically, the four female characters tell divergent but similar stories that come together abruptly by the novel's end. In 1902, eight-year-old Evie Crowder, the daughter of an American cochineal farmer, lives a cloistered life on a barren farm in Guatemala. Due to the draft policy surrounding indigenous Guatemalan men, her father is struggling to find the labor necessary to save their farm, and he makes a deal that will change Evie's life forever. In 1954, the wife of the American ambassador, Dorie, is planning a future with her lover, Tomás, far away from the communists who are taking over Guatemala. In 1983, Lenore and her husband, missionaries in Guatemala, believe they are helping the Christian president through their efforts to convert and baptize Mayans. In the final section, set in 1999, Jean takes her adopted Guatemalan daughter, Maya, on a tour of her birth country in hopes of mending their relationship and is flooded with memories of her time in the war-torn country. The mystery of Evie's life and the scars of Guatamala's past interactions with the U.S. tie the four threads together. Kerney's fine research, wealth of exact details, and control of the historical timeline will keep readers turning pages.
February 15, 2016
This nearly century-spanning novel traces a story set in Guatemala that explores different Americans' relationships with the country and a mystery involving an American family that winds through the turbulent politics of the century. Beginning her novel in 1902, Kerney (Born Again, 2006) introduces Evie, an 8-year-old American girl living in Guatemala; her father encounters corruption and violence as he tries to succeed as a wheat farmer in a corn-centric country. Next, the novel moves to 1954 and an American woman, Dorie, wife to a paternalistic U.S. politician, whose affair with her best friend's husband is causing her endless tension. The next section, set in 1983, follows a married missionary couple encountering a country racked by war. The woman, Lenore, starts to question some of the assumptions of her church (and her husband's dominance) as she attempts to convert the desperately poor Mayan population. This section makes some of the most interesting reading of the book. The last portion, set in 1999, follows a lesbian mother, Jean, who takes her adopted daughter on a journey to explore the girl's Guatemalan heritage--and continue her affair with a fiery professor. The threads of the novel are loosely intertwined, so characters from one passage show up in another, and Kerney's main point--that Americans are naive and relatively ignorant about a people they often see as backward--is well-taken, though at times it seems overdone. The novel is also weighed down by scenes that go on for too long and by glaring incongruities, especially in the first section. It's doubtful that in 1902, wives cried sarcastically to their husbands during arguments, "Hey, why not?," and it seems unrealistic that a sheltered 1954 American woman would use the f-word so often. The writing is often lazy: "He was handsome in the usual, exotic Hispanic way" is one description. After pages describing one disaster after another, this line appears: "Guatemala was not at all how her parents had told Evie it would be." Weighed down by simplistic writing, this ambitious novel's reach exceeds its grasp.
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February 1, 2016
Guatemala's tragic history in the 20th century has been defined by dictators, poverty, constant uprisings, continual mistreatment of the native Mayan population, and American attempts to benefit financially from the chaos. Kerney (Born Again) weaves a tale spanning the century in which four American women learn firsthand about the horrors of Guatemalan history and the truths of their own lives. In 1902 a family from Boston with a seven-year-old daughter believes wealth lies in farming wheat in this corn-loving country. In 1954 the wife of the American ambassador is convinced she will find love with a Guatemalan executive of American Fruit. In 1983 a missionary hopes to bring the message of her religion to the Mayas in the midst of a guerrilla war. In 1999 a woman brings her adopted daughter to Guatemala in order to discover the history of the girl's birth mother. VERDICT The author sensitively and skillfully interweaves these disparate stories into one in which the women, both Mayan and American, continue to matter; where the men--husbands, dictators and soldiers on both sides of the various conflicts--are portrayed in unflinching terms; and where hope is a virtually nonexistent commodity. [See Prepub Alert, 9/21/15.]--Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 15, 2015
In this follow-up to Born Again, a New York Public Library best book, Kerney sweeps through 100 years of Guatemalan history, from government corruption in 1902 to an adoptive mother's realization that the past never stays past in 1999.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.