02/03/2020
Vera (If I Bring You Roses ) follows the shifting fortunes of a Puerto Rican family after U.S. occupation in this intense, emotional saga. In 1889, 17-year-old Valentina Sanchez, head full of fantasies of Paris trips and grand romance, marries handsome coffee farmer Vicente Vega despite her family’s objections. She returns with him to his unwelcoming family in Utuado, where the vagaries of the coffee harvest delay their move from the isolated mountains. After three years, they move into a crudely built home, where happy times are overshadowed by the accidental death of their young daughter. When Vicente loses his farm in 1900 due to economic hardships following American occupation, the family leaves for Hawaii to work on sugar plantations. A series of tragedies and indignities ensues—the couple’s son drowns at sea on the way to the islands, and they’re greeted in Hawaii by squalid living conditions—before Vera ends the book on a slightly hopeful, if unresolved note, as the family bonds with other Puerto Rican families in Hawaii. Vera pieces together the epic tale with acute moments of crushing pain and disillusion overcome by the strong characters’ implacable resilience. The novel’s deeply felt mixture of the characters’ sorrow and joy offers a vibrant glimpse of the history of Puerto Ricans in Hawaii. Agent: Betsy Amster, Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises. (Jun.) Correction: The author's last name was misspelled in two instances in an earlier version of this review.
"A majestic work with the grand sweep of history and the intimacy of a compelling dream. Marisel Vera has written a compassionate, unforgettable, richly detailed novel about colonialism in all its guises, offering us little-known stories from the past that are essential to understanding the present."
"Enthralling. . . . [I]n a sense, The Taste of Sugar is a corrective to those French melodramas that Valentina once devoured: It’s a passionate love story purified in the crucible of suffering. . . . Intimate and finely drawn details are nested within a masterful work of historical fiction that traces monumental economic and political currents. . . . [A] Latino Grapes of Wrath ."
The Washington Post - Ron Charles
"Vera eloquently tells the story of an astonishing Puerto Rican family and their countrymen and women, as their people are constantly betrayed, discarded and ruined, first by the Spanish, next by the Americans, yet they never give up hope. Haunting, mesmerizing, and heart-scorching, you will turn pages while holding your breath. You don’t just read this genius alive novel, you live it."
"A family saga set against the backdrop of Puerto Rico in the late 1800s, The Taste of Sugar plunges us into a world where people who are struggling with profound poverty, abuse and discrimination manage to preserve their hopes, dignity, grace and the familial love that holds them together. Marisel Vera’s novel is a real contribution to the literature about the immigrant experience of yesterday—and today."
"Tapping into her Puerto Rican heritage and conducting plenty of research, [Vera] presents a heartfelt depiction of once-proud coffee plantation hacendados (owners) in very difficult times. . . . Progressing chronologically, the omniscient narrator seamlessly folds in Spanish words and phrases as well as epistolary interludes . . . Vera’s novel is historical fiction at its best, featuring engaging survivors from a forgotten past."
"Subtle yet arresting, The Taste of Sugar , is a gorgeous feat of storytelling. Marisel Vera melds meticulous research with deep compassion and pure talent to fashion a novel that excavates the pain of the history while drawing hope from the buried stories of our nation. This is historical fiction as its best, using the moral dilemmas of the past to decipher our present conflicts in order to light our way toward a more just future."
"Capacious.... A young woman, relinquishing a dream of one day seeing Paris, marries a coffee farmer and struggles to find a role in her new household.... The book, yoking family crises to geopolitical ones, succeeds in creating characters who feel individuated rather than schematic. The coffee farmer, observing his disenchanted bride, wonders, 'Why did all the women in his family stare out the window?'"
"In The Taste of Sugar , Vera adds an important contribution to Puerto Rican literature by chronicling the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico, the San Ciriaco hurricane, and the mass migration to Hawaii. Throughout, Vera captures the 'trabajo y tristeza' of the Puerto Rican people. Brava to Marisel Vera for telling our stories!"
05/01/2020
In the late 1890s, the devastating San Ciriaco hurricane wrecked the Puerto Rican sugar, cotton, tobacco, and coffee industries just as the island's population was coming to terms with the impact of the Spanish-American War and an American occupying force. Vera (If I Bring Roses ) captures the trials of Vicente and Valentina Vega, homing in on their efforts to sustain their struggling coffee farm amid overwhelming personal tragedies and trials. Like thousands of their compatriots, the couple risks immigration to Hawaii, where sugar plantation owners entice desperate families facing starvation with what are ultimately empty promises of an improved livelihood. Along with other laborers from Japan, the Vega family faces discrimination, horrific working conditions, poverty, and homesickness. The narrative is interspersed with letters from Valentina to her sister revealing Puerto Rico's rich, complex history and socioeconomic setting in the 19th century. VERDICT Vera's saga is impeccably timed to provide insights into the troubling history of Puerto Rico's relationship with the United States, and showing that the colonization of puertorriqueños extended to the Pacific fills a gap in history for many. Recommended for anyone who enjoys epic stories of hardship and loss as well as the perseverance, love, and strength drawn from one's family and culture.—Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis
2020-03-30
Valentina Sánchez comes from a middle-class, urban family in late-19th-century Puerto Rico. Her family has modest dreams, but Valentina luxuriates in her fantasies of marrying a handsome man and seeing Paris. When the dashing Vicente Vega, son of a very wealthy (or so Valentina assumes) coffee farmer, sweeps her off her feet at a cousin’s wedding, Valentina is determined to go against her family’s wishes and marry for love. However, Valentina’s marriage to Vicente never takes flight. Between fending off the advances of her lecherous father-in-law and dealing with the starkly unromantic realities of being married to a coffee farmer who’s actually quite poor, happiness eludes Valentina. As the novel creeps into the 20th century, Valentina’s suffering increases alongside Puerto Rico’s. Caught in the crossfire of the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rican farmers experience Spanish tax hikes, drought, American devaluation of the peso, and finally American occupation. Hurricane San Ciriaco kills thousands and washes away not just farms, but Puerto Rico’s dreams of self-rule. Eventually, Vicente and Valentina are lured by false promises to Hawaii, another U.S. territory described as paradise but rife with violence and exploitation. Vera tells a grand story using innovative techniques. The chapters tend to be short and are frequently interspersed with letters, detours into the past, and theatrical monologues. The Vega and Sánchez families are made up of vivid, fully realized characters, and Vera has a knack for writing dialogue that is full of personality. Her descriptions of Puerto Rico’s natural beauty are impressive: “[Vicente and Valentina] meant only to look up at the stars from the veranda, but the scent of orchids lured them into the garden and soon they were enveloped by coconut palms. Las damas de noches opened their white petals for the moon, and the moon mistook the silver embroidery on Valentina’s dress for stars.” Where the novel runs ashore is in grappling with historical events. Vega chronicles the exploitation of Puerto Rico by the Spanish and then the Americans, and the reader will emerge with a deep sense of Puerto Rican history and suffering that has been lost to most Americans, but at times the author's devotion to historical details and anecdotes pushes the beautifully wrought characters aside.
Vera’s breakout novel is a sweeping, emotional tale that puts her characters, and her readers, through an emotional wringer.
