March 1, 2024
Chasing treasure at the end of the rainbow in 1976, a young boy stumbles into secrets dating back to the Dominican Civil War of 1965. On the way home to his "miserable little shack," young �ngel Maceta marvels at the array of colors created by the sprinklers on a nearby golf course. But it's when he begins to dig into the sand traps in search of treasure that the real marvels emerge. Distributing his found "treasures" (a bike chain, a basketball hoop), �ngel brightens his neighbors' days and creates waves of good feeling in his corner of Santo Domingo. But he also stumbles onto his family's past and secrets about his deceased revolutionary father. Meanwhile, a parallel narrative set during the war explores dramatic intrigues and violent confrontations. Blow-by-blow action sequences, suitcases containing gold bars, and a framing story in which the narrator reminds his distracted audience to pay attention all give the novel a rollicking, cinematic quality. (It was released as a film in 2017.) But the underlying truths about Dominican history that award-winning Cabiya excavates are serious indeed.
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March 1, 2024
Cabiya--a Puerto Rican writer who lives in the Dominican Republic--turns a military thriller about the 1965 Dominican civil war into a contemporary fairy tale about a young boy whose innocent goodness has the power to change lives. The narrator of this novel, full of "disquisitions and digressions and detours," is recounting these two stories to specific listeners. While their identities are not fully revealed until much later, from early on it's clear that they're hearing a braided tale about their father and grandfather. But this is no Princess Bride. The 1965 uprising was very real, and Cabiya offers an immersion into the Dominican Republic of the time and a history lesson on the U.S.'s problematic role in upending Dominican democracy. In this fictionalized version of events, American officers become involved in questionable schemes involving valuable gold ingots. As a result, heroic Dominican revolutionary leader Puro Maceta, a saintly (fictional) mix of Che Guevara and Jesus--both pointedly referenced in the novel--is betrayed by a Judas-like companion. Puro spends the last hours before his murder making love, and a decade later the son he and his beloved conceived is "perfect," a mix of sweetness and wisdom beyond his years. Following rainbows caused by sprinklers on a golf course, which is coincidently owned by the people who caused his father's death, 10-year-old Maceta finds small treasures, discarded everyday objects like a bird feeder, a bicycle chain, and a Magic 8 Ball, that inadvertently transform his neighbors' lives; the notebook in which Maceta names and describes his discoveries is the book's most charming element. But the villains from the war years continue to prey on Maceta's neighbors in ugly ways involving sex and money until the convoluted plot concerning those still-missing ingots comes to fruition. Good and evil, love and violence are dualities at play as innocence is threatened but prevails. A sometimes angry, sometimes sardonic, but ultimately optimistic view of humanity.
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March 11, 2024
The dense and exciting latest from Cabiya (Wicked Weeds) delves into the Dominican Republic’s 1965 civil war and its aftermath. The narrative toggles between 1965, when U.S. Marine commander Julius Horton and local politician Molina torture and entrap their revolutionary adversaries Puro and Oviedo, and 1976, when 10-year-old Angel Maceta, who lives in a shack with his mother Imna, twin aunts, and baby brother, discovers the truth about the death of his father, a hero of the opposition. A suitcase full of gold stolen by the rebels provides the central conflict in 1965, when a Marine interrogates Oviedo in hopes of finding its whereabouts. In 1976, Angel discovers magical items in the trash, such as a black vinyl disk that morphs into a record collection and a steel ring that turns into a basketball hoop. For the characters, each day is a struggle against abuses committed by the country’s dictatorship, such as maiming, rape, and torture, but the secret magic unearthed by Angel provides hope (thanks to the steel ring, one neighbor goes on to become a basketball star). Cabiya evokes the Dominican Republic’s heat and passion with frank and poetic prose and the excitement of a spy thriller. This is teeming with life.