Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer

March 1, 2021

DEBUT In Figueroa's seductive, lyrically wrought debut, as much dreamscape as story, the mother of Rufina and Rafa has been dead for months but haunts them still at their house in Ciudad de Tres Hermanas. Though nearly 30 and world-traveled, Rafa was always held close by his mother and cannot imagine living without her, so 28-year-old Rufina makes him a bet. That weekend, if they can earn enough money performing in the plaza to leave town, he must embrace life. Otherwise, he can do as he pleases. In childhood, the siblings worked the plaza as part of a live installation devised by the Explorer, a charmer who insinuated himself into the family and wreaked havoc. Now, as clueless tourists trot by, Rafa exercises his special magic--reading meaning into shadows--and Rufina sings seductively, watched over by a ragged angel and a worshipful young policeman. She's as troubled as Rafa, still imagining she has the baby lost long ago in childbirth. Family and ancestral history are bound tightly with immediate events as the weekend moves toward its fateful last hours. VERDICT The narrative can get a little lost in the gorgeous, reflective language but remains an absorbing study of memory and grief.

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Starred review from November 1, 2020
Figueroa's curious and dazzling first novel features a family in which love has been tragically twisted by traumas old and new. The story takes place over the weekend during which sister Rufina and brother Rafa grieve for their recently deceased mother, Rosalinda, even as her ghost lingers. With Rafa heading into peril, Rufina, in a bid to save his life, proposes a bet stipulating that over that fateful weekend they will make enough money for Rafa to get away from his troubles by performing a strange tableau with imaginary instruments and disintegrating clothes, a stratagem devised by the evil ""explorer"" of the title, for the tourists in their dusty New Mexican town. Certain entities watch over Rufina, standing ready to support her when needed, including their adobe house; her actual, scruffy guardian angel; an old suitor who also happens to be the strangely endearing town cop; and the Grandmothers to All. Figueroa's omniscient, second-person narration creates an intimacy while the hypnotic rhythm of her prose and evocative mystical elements invoke an archetypal sense that is at once out-of-time and thoroughly contemporary as we grudgingly recognize our own precarious epoch.

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