Candelaria

Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming meets Zoraida Crdova's The Inheritance of Orqudea Divina in a debut novel by the author of Dreaming of You, following a fiery Guatemalan grandmother after a natural disaster brings about the end of the world as we know it. A deadly earthquake eerily similar to one in 1976 that left Guatemala in ruins leaves Massachusetts in shambles and sets off a global apocalypse. Strange creatures emerge from the earth's broken surface and begin to wreak havoc. An elderly Guatemalan grandmother named Candelaria Candy Garcia is determined to make her way to her estranged daughter Lucia, who is twenty miles out of the city in the suburbs. Taking place over the course of one day, Candelaria follows the 88-year-old grandmother's reflections on past mistakes and losses as she treks through charred roads and highways to get to her family. A sweeping, mystical intergenerational novel about mothers and daughters, Candelaria explores the far reaches of historical trauma, how myths of the past can pre-determine one's present, and how one can strive to break those cycles and define one's own futures despite the looming end of the world.