MAGICAL REALISM MEETS REAL-LIFE STRUGGLE
ON THE ARGENTINE PAMPAS
"This lyrical novel has an almost otherworldly quality to it, and the author successfully maintains the reader's interest throughout the unusual tale."
--Library Journal
What is it about the South American plains that so inspires romantic writing? Perhaps it is the unique way of life of the gaucho, first cousin to our cowboy of the American wild west. In any case, it is a land of legend and challenge, especially for Diana, a former Broadway ballet dancer, and her husband, Michael, an English engineer, who immigrate to the pampas of Argentina, together with their two-year-old son, Philip, in the early 1960s to build a dairy farm.
Their experience on the pampas proves to be a roller coaster of emotions. They learn the ways of the local people, only to have their profits stolen from them by unscrupulous business associates in an unpredictable political climate. They join a network of friends and neighbors, only to find that some of their closest new friends are former Nazis. But what is most disturbing for Diana is the discovery that their estancia is haunted. To whom does the strong but woebegone face of the gaucho that shows up from time to time in her bathroom mirror belong?
The marriage is tested on both sides by exotic affairs. And always there's the recurring howling wind of the great storms that sweep across the pampas out of Tierra del Fuego. A miscarriage sends Diana over the edge into temporary insanity, a somnambulistic nightmare.
But, despite all odds, Diana finds the rewards of farming great: the presence of nature all around her gives her and her son much comfort, especially in the embrace of the great nearby Ombú tree, in spite of the warning of her gaucho friend that "misfortune always comes to the house upon whose shadow the Ombú falls."
Finally, it is the gaucho from the past who unlocks the secret of the Ombú, that tall presence on the pampas: a symbol of what it takes to survive in a land of magical realism and harsh reality. |
