Todos Santos
Deborah Clearman
Release Date: August 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-0982520406
Price: $18.00
eBook Price: $7.99
DESCRIPTION
When Catherine Barnes leaves home and her adulterous husband to explore the Guatemalan mountain town of Todos Santos, she brings her paints and her wayward adolescent son. Catherine sets out in hopes of finding an intangible something, a new direction perhaps, and an ability to get through to her son who has just flunked out of the eighth grade. She never expects that her journey will include nearly losing her son to kidnappers, witnessing a lynching that almost ruins the town of Todos Santos which she comes to love quite deeply, or rediscovering her own womanhood.
ADVANCE PRAISE
"Clearman paints a vivid picture of the gritty and graceful sights of Guatemala as well as of the human heart, while touching upon the universal instinct to protect our children from real and imagined threats." —Holly MacArthur, managing editor of Tin House
"With a perceptive eye for detail and knowledge of the human heart, Deborah Clearman introduces us to characters who are both utterly unlike any we have encountered on the page before, and utterly believable." —Joyce Maynard
"Deborah Clearman is a born storyteller, and Todos Santos is an expertly conceived tale. In it, a marriage-weary American wife and her adventurous young son lose their way in present day Guatemala. Clearman's feel for the vivid weave of folklore and history in this exotic world made her story come alive for me, but its real terrain is the familiar,surprising human heart." —Lesley Dormen, author of The Best Place to Be
REVIEWS
"Humiliated by her husband's recent infidelities, Iowan artist Catherine Barnes journeys to exotic, politically tumultuous Guatemala to get some space and begin work on a new picture book, accompanied by her troubled teenage son, Isaac, who recently flunked out of eighth grade. The plan is for Isaac to work at his aunt's handicrafts store--a kind of "tough-love boot camp"--while Catherine explores the mountainous Mayan village of Todos Santos for painting subjects; the plan hits a snag after Isaac makes a series of bad decisions that lead to his abduction. As Isaac tries to get himself out of trouble, Catherine finds herself the target of local superstitions regarding foreigners and baby snatching. With the help of a handsome, warmhearted tour guide, Catherine draws on forgotten reserves of strength and independence to cope with the town's animosity and her son's disappearance. Clearman (The Goose's Tale) has a fluid, readable style, but her characters can lack emotional credibility and her stranger-ina-strange-land plot line fails to surprise. Nevertheless, Catherine and Isaac reach some satisfying conclusions about themselves and their future, making this a worthwhile read." —Publisher's Weekly
"This slender debut novel covers a great amount of territory. When children's author/illustrator Catherine and her son Isaac flee their home in Iowa for Guatemala, she is hoping to straighten out her troubled 14-year-old son and reassess her failing marriage after discovering that her husband has been having affairs with his students. Depositing Isaac with her sister-in-law, the owner of a native crafts shop for tourists, Catherine seeks inspiration for a new book in the mountain community of Todos Santos, where Mayan folkways predominate and an unreasonable belief that tourists are baby stealers has swept the village. As Isaac finds trouble in the lowlands and xenophobic paranoia sweeps through Todos Santos, the novel comes to a terrifying conclusion in which all the protagonists are forced to realize what is important and what is not... This novel by the program director for New York Writers Coalition and children's author (The Goose's Tale) will resonate with readers of feminist fiction in which heroines can make it without the trappings of conventional marriage and also with those who enjoy discovering the culture of exotic locales. Fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Anne Tyler may enjoy this title." —Library Journal Review
"Clearman’s debut novel melds the coming-of-age tales of both an American woman and her son, each story set against the backdrop of beautiful, exotic, and sometimes frightening Guatemala. Catherine Barnes—mired in an unhappy marriage to a philandering older husband and struggling with her 14-year-old son Isaac’s nihilistic attitude and subsequent failure to finish eighth grade—makes a sojourn to Guatemala for the summer, ostensibly to find the subjects for a children’s book she is illustrating. Isaac is left with his expatriate aunt Zelda for a fortnight, which turns into a hellish odyssey complete with his introduction to drink and drugs, the accidental drowning of a newfound friend that he fails to report to the police, and an unfortunate association with a street-savvy kidnapper posing as Isaac’s savior. With the injection of two side plots—Catherine’s unrealistically sudden and passionate affair with her tour driver, and a lunatic preacher who whips the townsfolk into an antiforeigner frenzy, cautioning them against “baby-stealers” posing as tourists—Clearman’s debut makes for an entertaining, though highly improbable, read." —Booklist