Fruit of the Drunken Tree

May 1, 2018
The perils of day-to-day existence in late-20th-century Colombia--a time of drug lords, guerrillas, kidnappings, and car bombs--are glimpsed through the eyes of a child and her family's teenage maid, whose relationship exposes two facets of the class divide.Choosing a young girl to deliver a perspective on political chaos and terror is a mixed blessing in Contreras' debut, set in Bogotá in the lawless era of Pablo Escobar. Her chief narrator is 7-year-old Chula Santiago, whose dreamy insights and immaturity both intensify and limit what the narrative can offer. Chula is the bright younger daughter of an oil worker employed by an American company and whose income allows the family to live in the relative safety of a gated neighborhood. The Santiagos' maid, Petrona Sánchez, introduces a different perspective. Her family has been destroyed by the paramilitary that burned down their farm and abducted her father and elder brothers. Now Petrona, her mother, and her siblings live in "a hut made of trash" in the capital's slums, prey to gangs, drugs, and thugs. While the two girls develop a bond, their separate experiences include political assassination, desolation, addiction, and dangers of many kinds alongside the fancifulness, games, and easy, often thoughtless distractions of childhood. Chula and her sister are indulged by their parents and leave town when threats appear at their most extreme. Petrona, struggling to support her family, falls under the sway of a shady but charismatic boy, Gorrión. Through Chula's eyes, events take place in a drifting, foreshortened present, and her incomprehension at times denies the story a quality of three-dimensionality. But a sudden gear change reorders matters, plunging the narrative into a flurry of dangerous developments from which everyone emerges redefined.A tragic history is filtered through fiction, and the results are patchy: sometimes constrained by invention, sometimes piercing.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 21, 2018
Rojas Contreras packs her coming-of-age debut full of details about life in early 1990s Colombia during the last year of Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror. Seven-year-old Chula’s sheltered life in a gated community with her mother and older sister Cassandra cracks open with the arrival of 13-year-old maid Petrona. Petrona comes from a nearby shanty town and fascinates the implausibly precocious Chula, whose greatest excitements are spying on the richest lady in their neighborhood and hunting ghosts. Chula’s formidable mother, Alma, grew up in a slum and copes with standoffish and judgmental well-heeled neighbors while her husband works in the oil fields. The family temporarily flees to Alma’s home village to escape Bogotá’s escalating violence, while Chula and Petrona get drawn into a situation that will eventually pose a dire threat. Chula’s fixation on the news allows smooth introduction of the historical events surrounding Colombia’s instability and Escobar’s eventual death. The skeletal chapters from Petrona’s perspective provide some belated explanations for the danger she exposed the family to. This striking novel offers an atmospheric journey into the narrow choices for even a wealthy family as society crumbles around them.

Starred review from May 15, 2018
In this incomparable debut novel, Contreras draws on her own experience growing up in turbulent 1990s Bogot�, Colombia, amid the violence and social instability fueled by Pablo Escobar's narcotics trafficking. In vividly rendered prose, textured with generous Spanish, Contreras tells the story of an unlikely bond between two girls on the verge of womanhood: Chula, the daughter of a middle-class family, and Petrona, the teenager hired to serve as the family's maid. While Chula's family can afford to protect themselves behind the suburban walls of a gated community, Petrona must support her many siblings as they struggle to survive the inner-city slums. Despite their differences, and driven by Chula's curiosity about Petrona's odd habits, the two become inseparably close until decisions must be made that will alter their futures forever. Contreras' deeply personal connection to the setting lends every scene a vital authenticity, and a seemingly unlimited reservoir of striking details brings the action to life, like the trumpets and accordions on Christmas Eve, or the messy Afro of Petrona's suspicious new boyfriend. A riveting, powerful, and fascinating first novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from May 1, 2018

Based on the author's experiences growing up in drug war-torn B�gota in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this moving story is told in the dreamlike voice of seven-year-old Chula, who lives with her sister, Cassandra, and their proud, personable mother in a rich neighborhood while their father is away working in an oil field. Then 13-year-old Petrona, whose now poverty-stricken family was ripped apart by guerillas, comes to work for them. Enamored of Petrona, Chula sets out to discover all she can about the girl and her new, dangerous boyfriend, no matter the cost to her own safety. Young Chula also harbors morbid fascinations with bloody tales of local car bombings and follows politics with as much fervor as she does telenovelas. Rojas Contreras's narrative presents a Colombia different from that portrayed in popular media, such as Netflix's Narcos. She does an excellent job of articulating the complicated political situation and illustrating the heartbreaking day-to-day reality for children. VERDICT A fascinating, poetic read from an up-and-coming author. For fans of literary fiction and libraries with immigrant communities. [See Prepub Alert, 1/8/18.]--Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018

Already the winner of several honors (e.g., a Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Fellowship), Bogota-born Rojas Contreras draws on her own life to chronicle the relationship between seven-year-old Chula, sheltered within her gated community from the violence of 1990s Colombia, and the family's new teenage maid.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018
The perils of day-to-day existence in late-20th-century Colombia--a time of drug lords, guerrillas, kidnappings, and car bombs--are glimpsed through the eyes of a child and her family's teenage maid, whose relationship exposes two facets of the class divide.Choosing a young girl to deliver a perspective on political chaos and terror is a mixed blessing in Contreras' debut, set in Bogot� in the lawless era of Pablo Escobar. Her chief narrator is 7-year-old Chula Santiago, whose dreamy insights and immaturity both intensify and limit what the narrative can offer. Chula is the bright younger daughter of an oil worker employed by an American company and whose income allows the family to live in the relative safety of a gated neighborhood. The Santiagos' maid, Petrona S�nchez, introduces a different perspective. Her family has been destroyed by the paramilitary that burned down their farm and abducted her father and elder brothers. Now Petrona, her mother, and her siblings live in "a hut made of trash" in the capital's slums, prey to gangs, drugs, and thugs. While the two girls develop a bond, their separate experiences include political assassination, desolation, addiction, and dangers of many kinds alongside the fancifulness, games, and easy, often thoughtless distractions of childhood. Chula and her sister are indulged by their parents and leave town when threats appear at their most extreme. Petrona, struggling to support her family, falls under the sway of a shady but charismatic boy, Gorri�n. Through Chula's eyes, events take place in a drifting, foreshortened present, and her incomprehension at times denies the story a quality of three-dimensionality. But a sudden gear change reorders matters, plunging the narrative into a flurry of dangerous developments from which everyone emerges redefined.A tragic history is filtered through fiction, and the results are patchy: sometimes constrained by invention, sometimes piercing.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.