The stories in this prize-winning collection evoke a complete world, one so richly imagined and finely realized that the stories themselves are not so much read as experienced. The world of these stories is Portuguese-American, redolent of incense and spices, resonant with ritual and prayer, immersed in the California culture of freeway and commerce. Lacked with lyrical prose and vivid detail, acclaimed writer Katherine Vaz conjures a captivating blend of Old World heritage and New World culture to explore the links between families, friends, strangers, and their world.

 

From the threat of a serial killer as the background for a young girl’s first brush with death to the fallout of a modern-day visitation from the Virgin Mary; from an AIDS-stricken squatter refusing to vacate an empty Lisbon home to a mother’s yearlong struggle with the death of her synesthetic daughter, these deft stories make their world ours.

"Vaz's collection of beautifully written short stories are steeped in tragedy and religious mysticism. In the title story, Isabel Serpa and her aunt Connie need a miracle to combat their landlord's rent increase; the solution might be a virgin sighting among the artichokes in the yard, but 17-year-old Isabel is skeptical of her aunt's plan: 'all prayers were requests for immediate action, and no one was willing to sit inside any mystery.' In another, a mother's 17 years of grief become a compulsive, ever-expanding art exhibit in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: 'I take up half a wall with space reserved for many years more... it's impossible for me to stop.' Another finds a gambler using ill-gotten funds to purchase his daughter a spectacular cape for the Portuguese Holy Ghost Festival, hoping to attract a Hollywood talent scout but also to relieve her of the all-consuming grief she holds for her deceased grandfather. Vaz is a soulful writer who understands her protagonists' complex lives, as well as the way religious beliefs can assert themselves most powerfully after leaving native soil." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

(Julie Glass, Jan 11 2008 )

(Allegra Goodman, May 6 2008 )

(SFGate.com, Oct 12 2008 )

Katherine Vaz is a Briggs-Copeland Fellow in fiction at Harvard University. She is the author of Saudade, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection; Mariana, available in six languages and selected by the Library of Congress as one of the Top 30 International Books of 1998; and Fado & Other Stories, winner of the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.