Synopses & Reviews
Acclaimed and award-winning author Francisco Goldman now delivers his third novel. A big novel of the Americas, a wonderful love story, The Divine Husband has at its center a remarkable young woman, María de las Nieves Moran, and the larger-than-life hero who briefly touched her life-Cuban poet-revolutionary José Martí. Around them swirl an unforgettable cast of characters striving for love or success in the heady late-19th-century atmosphere of Guatemala City and New York-Paquita, María's de las Nieves' aristocratic and beautiful friend, betrothed to a future dictator at thirteen; Mack Chinchilla, the half-Indian entrepreneur intent on winning María de las Nieves's hand; and a group of diplomats setting up a false Indian king to guard their political interests. Francisco Goldman has written a truly epic novel of great humanity and heart.
Synopsis
One of the most talented and award-winning writers of his generation, Francisco Goldmans third novel, The Divine Husband, appeared to wide and rapturous acclaim. Beginning with a single, possibly scandalous love poem by Jose Marti, Cubas greatest revolutionary-poet-hero with an infamous secret love life, The Divine Husband is the story of Maria de las Nieves Moran, a former nun forced out of her convent by a revolution in a Central American capital. While making her way in this metropolis nicknamed The Little Paris,” she enrolls in a writing class taught by Jose Marti, under whose spell Maria de las Nieves and her classmates quickly fall. Soon after, Maria de las Nieves flees her home for New York, where Marti has also relocated -- a crucial interval that shaped Martis consciousness. Nearly a century later, an elderly woman in Massachusetts hires a college student to investigate her claim that she is the illegitimate offspring of Marti and Maria de las Nieves. Mixing a lovingly re-created historical past with often hilarious, ironic, and moving conjecture that brings to life an unforgettable heroine and her remarkable collection of friends, nemeses, and rival suitors, The Divine Husband is a magnificent American novel.