A propulsive family drama, the story of a woman determined to recover her kidnapped daughter in the ruins of Chavez’s social revolution--the fast-paced English language debut of an award-winning and bestselling author that brings the Venezuelan migrant crisis to life in lyrical, seething prose, for readers of Elizabeth Acevedo, Jesmyn Ward, and Gabriela Garcia “Elisa left with Camilo.” “Camilo took her out of the country.” These are the text messages Nina receives while living in the storage room of a university in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where she’s cleaning houses to make money to send back home.;; Home is 4,500 miles away, in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where the water never runs on Mondays and there’s yet another blackout. Where a trip to the grocery store costs 220 times the minimum wage.;; Home is Elisa, her thirteen-year-old daughter, who loves to run around the house and belt out Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” Who should be growing when instead her waist is shrinking. Home is Graciela, her mother, who lately stays shut up in her room all day talking with her dead, most urgently her beloved husband Raùl (who’s just as eager to talk back from the grave).; And what the hell does Camilo think he’s doing now, stealing off with their daughter to the United States of America--the one place Nina most assuredly never wants to call home?; Narrated through the voices of Nina and her family, and through the voice of her treacherous ex, Camilo, <The Winds of Maracaibo< is the heart-racing tale of a mother fighting to get her daughter back across the border, at any cost--a brave and furious reversal of the American Dream and an ode to the Venezuelan women who gave their blood, sweat, and tears to a nation dismantled by the egos of men....

Autorentext
MARÍA ELENA MORÁN is a Venezuelan writer and screenwriter based in Brazil. She is the author of the novel Los Continentes del Adentro. Her second novel, The Winds of Maracaibo (published as Volver a cuándo in Spain), won the Café Gijón Prize in Spain and has been translated into Italian, Portuguese, and English.

MADELINE JONES is an editor at Algonquin Books. She recently completed a master’s degree in translation studies at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and lives between Barcelona and New York.

Leseprobe
Part I

The thing is, your daughter doesn’t want to speak to you, and that’s it, Graciela finally said, tired of sugarcoating and hand-wringing, though just a few minutes earlier her excuse had been that the kid couldn’t come to the phone because she was playing on the computer—which Nina knew had to be a lie, because before that she’d said the power was out, and before that lie she’d made up another, saying the girl was in the shower, because, who could have guessed, there was water coming out of the showerhead, a total improbability on a Monday, there was never water on Mondays—and it had been two months since the water ran from anywhere, any day of the week, and at least six since that showerhead had seen a drop. So finally, out of excuses, Graciela cracked: Elisa is rebelling and doesn’t want to talk to you, and I’m not going to make her. And when Nina insisted her daughter pick up the phone—I’m her mother and she’s not in charge—Graciela rebuffed her with cutting indifference: You’ll have to work it out with her later, I don’t know what else to tell you, because she says mothers don’t abandon their children, and what can I say if that’s the truth. And it was in the middle of this rant that, on the other end of the line, in a little corner of Brazil called Pacaraima, Nina started to smell something burning and heard screams, coño, they’re burning us down! They’re burning us down! And she saw people batting at flames rising in the distance out of the Coleman tents, which for the past two days had been her room, her house, her hotel. Now the camp was starting to look more like an oven. I’ll call you back, Mami. And she ran, making her way through the desperate mass of people frantically gathering up the few charred bundles that were left of their baggage—their
whole existence—for the coming days or months or years.

Chama, I’m getting out of this mess, I’m not staying where I’m not wanted, Nina’s tent neighbor, a woman from Valencia, said to her as she moved to join the stampede crossing the border back into Venezuela, where the inferno was an inferno but at least it was theirs, constitutionally granted. Where they had the right to complain—though even that was running short lately, among so many shortages, covered over with government excuses, and a whiff of the military’s involvement in everything. Nina tried to convince her that this was just a small setback, that the other hundreds of people who had helped them counted for much more than the five fucking heartless bastards who would set fire to a camp full of kids and teenagers waiting for asylum. She watched them, still standing there admiring their act of vigilante justice, as she tried to reassure her, but not that hard, because Nina didn’t think she could take on the weight of convincing someone else of this venture that was already starting to look more like a tragedy.

She had seen the hate in those eyes, isso aqui não é Venezuela, porra!, she had heard them and understood because hate, taca fogo, taca fogo em tudo!, doesn’t need translation, vão embora, seus filhos da puta!, the hate of those who say they’re defending the city from a horde of delinquents all because one or two assholes—when is there not at least one or two around?—among thousands of immigrants had to go and do something stupid, and probably most of the attackers and those cheering them on didn’t even know what the supposed crime had been. She had seen their eyes. They were so, so few, these arsonists, compared to the other locals who’d brought water and lanchinho and blankets, but their voices were so filled with malice and fear-turned-malice, and they looked so proud, recording their history-making moment with their phones, shouting in her ears, that all she could say to her neighbor was, Well, take care of yourself, Mamita. And she stood there, with her treasures rescued from the fire—the rescue had cost her her sneakers, the soles now melted from all the stomping, stomping, stomping on the flames until her backpack stopped smoking.

She took stock of her life-in-a-backpack and saw that, apart from the plastic bags and the three little rolls of toilet paper that the flames had targeted, the rest of her stuff seemed to have survived. Her sandals were still ugly but intact. The three pairs of jeans, one jumpsuit, five T-shirts, five pairs of tights, three bras, and the only dress, her favorite, one that had seen her through a ridiculous number of nights salsa dancing, all smelled horribly of kerosene; but at least her fifteen pairs of underwear had made it. She had brought so many because one thing she could not stand was walking around with dirty underwear, and with the same compulsion she’d put them in a Ziploc bag, so at least they’d been protected from the smell. The plastic folder where she kept the most expensive, the most labor-intensive items, like her clean background check and birth certificate, had melted a bit at the corners, and pulling them out would require tweezers. Her Boy Scout kit, with a lantern, knife, tinderbox, matches, cell phone charger, and tiny dish and utensils set, was still in perfect shape, like her toiletry bag at the bottom of her backpack, where the bath soap, shampoo, pads, razors, a bit of makeup, and even condoms, jus…