Summer Reading 2022: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

 

I took a few days of vacation to make a long weekend and was determined to finish a few books in my summer TBR list. This novel has been in my pile for a few months. I started it in May, got distracted, and put it down. Yesterday I picked it back up and got swept away pretty immediately. 

Beatriz needs to get married to escape the awful life her and her mother are in after her father is taken away in the night and murdered for plotting against the Mexican government. It's 1823 and women have limited choices. She married Rodolfo Solórzano, a wealthy man who takes her to his home, the Hacienda San Isidro. 

Beatriz isn't greeted with much enthusiasm by the servants at San Isidro, nor Rodolfo's sister Juana. She's the second Doña Solórzano, and yikes it's not the welcome she was hoping for. The first wife of Rodolfo was a horrible woman who treated the servants terribly and made everyone's life miserable. She died from typhoid a few years before. 

However, the moment Beatriz steps into the hacienda, she feels something is terribly, terribly wrong. The house seethes with bad energy; cold air sweeps through in waves; doors slam, and there are those terrible red eyes peeking through the darkness. Rodolfo leaves for business in the capitol, and Beatriz is terrified to live in the house alone. She hears voices, sees terrible visions, and is afraid to sleep. 

She attends church, and asks for a blessing. Snubbed by the older, crabby Padre, she meets Padre Andrés, a young priest who grew up at San Isidro and has returned to take care of the village outside of the hacienda. He agrees to bless the hacienda, and oh boy, what he feels and sees when he visits is exactly what Beatriz experiences: an unholy, terrible, evil force. 

Who's that force? Why, the first Doña, of course. Beatriz is frantic to fight the evil-she just isn't strong enough to do it herself. Andrés has a few surprises of his own that may just be enough to fight the evil that inhabits the hacienda. It may kill them first, though. 

There's a lot going on here with back story and the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence. Generations of people working on the same land; generations of the same land owners treating those people poorly and taking advantage of them. People who can't get away because of the class system that keeps them down. A priest who is also a witch, and must be careful to not be exposed. A woman who thought she was marrying a man who would give her a home, only to realize the home, and her husband, are awful. Cut off from any help, she only had Andrés to turn to. The folks around the hacienda know something dark is there, but are too afraid to do anything about it. 

This was a spooky story--I could feel that numbing cold rolling down the hallways. Author Isabel Cañas does an excellent job building tension and terror and ramping it up. This is evil that is vicious and nasty. Can you imagine what this woman was like when she was alive?! I raced through this horror novel, and was tense every time Beatriz had to be in the hacienda alone. 

A horror novel of a different kind, set in 1823 Mexico. The setting was well drawn and I could picture it all in my mind. Beatriz was smart, tough, and stalwart in her belief that there was something very wrong in the hacienda. Padre Andrés was a complex character torn by guilt as a priest and the power he was born to use for good. 

Rating: 5/6 for a tense, atmospheric horror novel with a historical setting. Once I got into it, I was hooked. 

A big thanks to Berkley for an ARC of the novel. 

Available in hardcover, ebook, and audio. 

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Summer Reading 2022: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

I'm not usually one to immediately jump on the bandwagon and read a celebrity book club selection right out of the gate. However, when I saw this memoir was picked for Reese Witherspoon's book club, I thought I'd read an excerpt. I was hooked from those few paragraphs, and immediately bought the ebook for my Nook. I knew, based on bestseller lists, and my library's holdings, that any book I wanted to read regarding racial issues would be hard to come by because of demand. 

I'm still processing all that Austin had to say. I'm still thinking about all the things I say, do, and think that have a basis in racist thinking that goes so deep I'm not even aware of it. That is comes from simply being born and growing up white in middle-class Midwest America in the 1970's and 1980's. And that, I believe, is what white people struggle with-those people who want change, that is. I struggle to comprehend the enormity of the road we have ahead of us, and the road that has lead us here, today. 

Austin says many things that hit home. The struggle of just going to work every day as the only black person on a staff that promotes diversity but does anything but. That she has to keep a file on her computer of all the good emails she gets, to have her armor ready when she's called out for her "attitude" that makes others uncomfortable--when it's the others who should be called out. The worry about bringing her son into the world, and how she and her husband will explain the world to him while also bringing him up with joy and love for who he is. 

This was a powerful book to read, and I would definitely ask others to read it, as well. I am thinking, taking it all in, and yes, struggling a bit with some hard truths. And that's okay. I should be looking within and asking myself some hard questions.

While the whole memoir was an important and impactful read, I will always think of the last few pages, when Austin discusses hope. Knowing that you're in the middle of a long road, where you can't see the end. You have to keep the hope up, you have to keep fighting, even knowing you may not see the changes happen in your lifetime. You keep the fight moving for those who come after. 

This book is available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook. 

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I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Christmas Bells by Jennifer Chiaverini

I've left the spooky tales behind for now to focus on Christmas reads.  Yes, I know it's only November.  But there is something very satisfying about reading Christmas stories leading up to the holiday season.  They always put me in a good mood and are one of my most favorite things to do after Halloween--besides dream of Christmas baked goods.  

Jennifer Chiaverini is well  known for her quilting series, but in recent years she has begun to write historical fiction centered around the American Civil War.  This book once again features the Civil War, but has a few added bonuses:  a famous poet, a contemporary church choir, and a link between the two.


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a famous poet, happily married and a father of five in the winter of 1860.  Abe Lincoln was just recently elected, and the rumblings of war were getting louder.  Living in Boston, Henry's life was full of good friends, a beloved wife, and his work.  Unfortunately, this would be one of the last supremely happy times of Henry's life.  

In contemporary Boston, on a cold December night, Sophia races to St. Margaret's church to teach her children's choir class.  She's a music teacher at a local school, and was just informed due to budget cuts her job will be eliminated at the end of the school year.  The children's choir is a source of great joy for her, and she's planning on having them sing "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", a carol based on Henry's poem Christmas Bells, written in 1863.  

At St. Margaret's church, a whole cast of characters round out the story:  a young mother struggling to remain upbeat for her two children while their father is in Afghanistan; a priest who gives service to others but is closed off from his brother; a widow who comes to listen to the children practice on the piano donated by her late husband, and a young man who is in love with Sophia but doesn't know how to move beyond the "friend" stage.  

You'd think Civil War Boston and contemporary Boston wouldn't mesh well in a story, but I found both stories equally compelling and wasn't bothered in the least by switching from one to the other.  The connection of family love, yearning, memories, and a wish for peace and harmony is a foundation that makes this novel a wonderful Christmas read.  I didn't know anything about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow before this novel, and I'm glad I've had a bit of an education about one of our beloved poets.  It does hold true that people are the same, no matter what century or circumstance.  We worry, we love, we mourn, we struggle to live a meaningful life.  And through all that, music makes our hearts sing.  

I think this would make a fantastic December read for anyone who likes a bit of history mixed in with a contemporary tale.  Fans of Jan Karon or Debbie Macomber would definitely like it.   

I'd like to thank Penguin Random House for a preview copy.  I'm happy to kick off my Christmas reading with this lovely, gentle story.  

Rating:  8/10 for a blending of two stories--one in the past, one contemporary, that makes sense.  Using a poem to connect the two stories is pretty clever.  All of the characters are likeable.  A novel with chock full of Christmas.  

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Christmas Bells by Jennifer Chiaverini