Carmen Rodríguez’s novel Retribution will be launched on Tuesday, November 15, 7pm, SFU Harbour Centre Room 1400-1410
This is how Women’s Press Literary, an imprint of Three O’Clock Press (Toronto) has described the book:
“When Tania, a thirty-six year old Vancouver artist receives a letter from a Chilean judge suggesting that her blood father may not be the man she has known as such her whole life, her world turns upside down. As she struggles to understand the implications of this disturbing proposition and endeavours to uncover the truth, she sets out to re-examine the family stories she heard from her mother and grandmother as she was growing up.
“Thus, Retribution unfolds: narrated by Sol, Tania’s mother and Soledad, her grandmother, with book-end interventions by Tania herself, the novel spans seventy-plus years in the life of the Martínez’s, from the ordinary yet unique ups and downs of their daily existence before the 1973 military coup, to the horror that ensued; on, to their flight to Canada as political refugees, and back to Chile again, as Sol joins the underground resistance movement to the dictatorship and later on looks for the remains of her disappeared husband.
“The three women’s journeys take us from Chile’s volcano-studded south, its mystic Atacama Desert and the jacaranda-lined streets of Santiago to the expansive beauty of the Canadian West Coast and bustling Commercial Drive in Vancouver. Moreover, we are invited into Soledad, Sol and Tania’s hearts and minds, as they grapple with their own demons and the extraordinary events that shape their lives.
“Humourous, tragic, uplifting, lyrical and gripping all at once, Retribution is a deeply moving, beautifully written tribute to all those who strive to live a life of purpose and integrity.”
Photos from the event courtesy of Josema Zamorano: