In 1953, a telegram impels Soli to rush to the Yucatán to be with her sister, Meche, breaching a separation of 2500 miles and forty years. As girls, the sisters grow up in a close-knit family on a remote farm in the Yucatán. But the death of their mother strains their relationship. Soli takes on the care of their baby brother, sidelining her attachment to Meche, and Meche increasingly chafes under her older sister's authority.
It's the eve of the Mexican Revolution and although the country is in turmoil, their father has other concerns-he's fallen in love with Lulu. Lulu runs a photography studio with her sister, Ruby, in the city of Campeche. Soli and Meche, now teenagers, are thrust into uneasy contact with them. They struggle to cope, and in 1910 the outbreak of war pulls the sisters apart-Soli travels with Lulu to the United States, and Meche stays behind with Ruby in Campeche.
With a war, a border and thousands of miles lying between the sisters, their lives unfold in unexpected ways. The novel tells their story in reverse, unraveling their journeys, peeling back the intricate layers of their relationships and probing the tangled sisterly bonds of rivalry, loyalty, resentment and love.
In 1953, a telegram impels Soli to rush to the Yucatán to be with her sister, Meche, breaching a separation of 2500 miles and forty years. As girls, the sisters grow up in a close-knit family on a remote farm in the Yucatán. But the death of their mother strains their relationship. Soli takes on the care of their baby brother, sidelining her attachment to Meche, and Meche increasingly chafes under her older sister's authority.
It's the eve of the Mexican Revolution and although the country is in turmoil, their father has other concerns-he's fallen in love with Lulu. Lulu runs a photography studio with her sister, Ruby, in the city of Campeche. Soli and Meche, now teenagers, are thrust into uneasy contact with them. They struggle to cope, and in 1910 the outbreak of war pulls the sisters apart-Soli travels with Lulu to the United States, and Meche stays behind with Ruby in Campeche.
With a war, a border and thousands of miles lying between the sisters, their lives unfold in unexpected ways. The novel tells their story in reverse, unraveling their journeys, peeling back the intricate layers of their relationships and probing the tangled sisterly bonds of rivalry, loyalty, resentment and love.