Swift as Desire

A magical, sensuous new love story from the author of the international bestseller Like Water for Chocolate.

Instead of entering the world crying like other babies, Jublio was born with a smile on his face. He had a gift for hearing what was in people's hearts, for listening to sand dunes sind and insects whisper. Even as a young boy, acting as an interpreter between his warring Mayan grandmother and Spanish-speaking mother, he would translate words of spite into words of respect, so that their mutual hatred turned to love. When he grew up, he put his gift to good use in his job as a humble telegraph operator.

But now the telegraph lies abandoned, obsolete as a form of communication in the electronic age, and Don Jublio is on his deathbed, mute and estranged from his beloved wife, Lucha, who refuses to speak to him. What tragic event has come between two such sensuous, loving people to cause their seemingly irreparable rift? What mystery lies behind the death of the son no one ever mentions? Can their daughter bring reconciliation to her parents before it is too late, by acting as an interpreter between them in Morse code, just as Don Jublio used to do for other people?

Swift as Desire is Laura Esquivel's loving tribute to her father, who worked his own lifelong magic as a telegraph operator. In this enchanting, bittersweet story, touched with graphic earthiness and wit, she shows us how keeping secrets will always lead to unhappiness, and how communication is the key to love.

From the Hardcover edition.

Laura Esquivel is the award-winning

The best-selling author of Like Water for Chocolate returns with a poignant and evocative new novel based on the life of her father that follows the fortunes of Don Jubilo, a telegraph operator who follows his destined role of communication conciliator, as his own life parallels the birth, rise, and eventual fall of the telegraph. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

As the millions of fans of Like Water for Chocolate know, Laura Esquivel is a romanticist whose novels explore the power of love and the truths of the human heart. She returns to those themes in Swift as Desire, the story of a loving and passionate man who has the gift of bringing happiness to everyone except his own wife.

The hero of this novel is Júbilo Chi, a telegraph operator who is born with the ability to “hear” people’s true feelings and respond to their most intimate, unspoken desires. His life changes forever the day he falls deeply and irrevocably in love with Lucha, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy family. She believes money is necessary to insure happiness, while for Júbilo, who is poor, love and desire are more important than possessions. But their passion for each other enables them to build a happy life together — until their idyll is shattered by a terrible event that drives them bitterly apart. Only years later, as Júbilo lies dying, is his daughter able to unravel the mystery behind her parents’ long estrangement and bring about a surprising reconciliation.