Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 1998 American Book AwardSpanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto Clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.
Sandra Benítez's first novel was A Place Where the Sea Remembers. She grew up in El Salvador, attended high school and college in Missouri, and now divides her time between Edina, Minnesota, where she teaches creative writing, and Mexico. Benítez won the Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature in 2004.
Winner of the 1998 American Book Award
Spanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto Clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.
"It is a story of passion, politics, death, and love, written with suspense: a country's tragic story seen by four strong women. This is the kind of book that fills your dreams for weeks."Isabel Allende
"Grabs us at the most visceral level . . . Benítez's clear writing and considerable imagination enable her to make the political personal, luminous, and even comic."Ms.
"An elegant epic . . . Benítez is a remarkable storyteller."The Denver Post
"Packs an emotional punch . . . A compelling read."The Boston Globe
"Explores passion, politics, love, death and betrayal in an intricately plotted mystery . . . Moving and lyrical."Minneapolis Star Tribune
"A luminously rendered second novel . . . Here, memorable pairs of mothers and daughters, caught up in the violence of recent Salvadoran history, live, love, and die for their passions. Benítez excels at capturing the textures of landscape, of class and period, and tells here a multi-generational saga shaped by politics but refreshingly free of polemic. Her upper-class characters are as fairly delineated as her peasants, as she tells the story of three generations of mothers and daughters whose lives intersect. She begins with the infamous massacre of 1932, when Indian peasants suspected of being communists were slaughtered in the countryside. Thirteen-year-old Jacinta and her mother, Mercedes Prieto, are the only survivors of the attack in which their home is burned and Mercedes' husband killed. The two struggle to survive. When Mercedes begins working for wealthy landowners Elena and Ernesto de Contreras, however, life improves. Elena, a more enlightened product of her class and times, has her own sadness: On the eve of daughter Magda's wedding, she discovers Cecilia, her best friend, in bed with Ernesto. Hurt and angry, she vows never to see Cecilia again, which of course has repercussions in a story that suffers from foreshadowing. As the country experiences coups and falling coffee prices, the women try to live normal lives but find it impossible. Jacinta's first love is killed for being a union supporter; Alma, her daughter by a married man, becomes a revolutionary and dies in a botched kidnapping; and Magda, who employs Jacinta and raises daughter Flor, along with Alma, loses her husband and son-in-law in the same kidnapping. Exile in Miami with a hint of a happy ending as the war heats up in the late '70s is the only option for Jacinta, Magda, and her family . . . A sometimes schematic but always vivid chronicle of strong women facing the challenges of living in sad and violent times."Kirkus Reviews
"Centering on a letter that remains unopened for 26 years, Benítez's impressive saga follows the intertwined lives of three generations of Salvadoran women, the very rich and the very poor, friends and mothers and daughters, mistresses and servants and, finally, oppressors and victims and guerrillas. Their lives are played out against the backdrop of the ever-present radio soap-opera serial and the violence and corruption of the police state and civil war of 20th-century El Salvador. Benítez's prose is rich and fluid; one tastes and smells the world of Jacinta and Magda and their mothers and daughters. Like her first novel, this work is another welcome addition to the growing body of Latina literature."Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield College Library, McMinnville, Oregon, Library Journal
Review
"Grabs us at the most visceral level . . . Benitez's clear writing and considerable imagination enable her to make the political personal, luminous, and even comic."--
Ms."An elegant epic . . . Benitez is a remarkable storyteller."--The Denver Post
"Packs an emotional punch . . . A compelling read."--The Boston Globe
"Explores passion, politics, love, death and betrayal in an intricately plotted mystery . . . Moving and lyrical."--Minneapolis Star Tribune
Synopsis
Winner of the 1998 American Book AwardSpanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto Clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.
Synopsis
Spanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Parietos clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.
Epic in scope, richly steeped in history, Benitez's poetic yet unsentimental novel takes you into another time, another place, and into the lives of characters so real they cannot be forgotten.
About the Author
Sandra Benitez's first novel was
A Place Where the Sea Remembers. She grew up in El Salvador, attended high school and college in Missouri, and now divides her time between Edina, Minnesota, where she teaches creative writing, and Mexico.
Reading Group Guide
1. How do the generations change, in their attitudes, beliefs, aspirations? Consider the world events surrounding these characters during the span of the novel, from 1932 to 1977: How are outside forces (economic depression, war, worker rebellion, civil unrest) reflected in their daily lives?
2. What is the significance of “Los Dos,” the daily radio soap opera-both its content and the rituals of its audience?
3. Coffee provides a way of life in El Salvador. What is its role in the lives of these characters, symbolically and literally?
4. There are elements of magic realism to this story. Discuss examples of magic realism and their role in the story: do you think the departure from reality adds to or detracts from your belief in these events? Why do you think the author chose to include them? Other writers (Laura Esquivel, Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, to name a few) have also used this effect; if you've read their work, compare it to Bitter Grounds, or discuss if or why Latin American writing lends itself to magic realism. Do any North American writers try their hands at it?
5. “In years to come, when she thought of this moment, Elena would know that it was here, at this time-standing around the bend of Cecilia's lake house, the dying sun pouring itself into the blue bowl of the lake-that her life was forever divided into its own before and after.” (page 130) Discuss other characters whose lives take equally dramatic and irreversible turns.
6. Bitter Grounds depicts the sharp differences between the lives of the rich and the poor. But the two classes also shared much in common. In what ways were they alike?
7. As the poor turned to the left for help politically, the rich turned to the right, and this polarization eventually led to a tragic civil war. Who do you think is to blame for the failure to find a middle ground?
8. Women writing about women are sometimes accused of doing so at the expense of their male characters. Discuss the role of men in this novel and how you feel they are portrayed.
9. What did you find interesting about mother/daughter relationships in Latin America? And how do these differ, if at all, from the way things work in our country?
10. In the final analysis, who were the winners and who were the losers in Bitter Grounds?