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The Heiress of Water: A Novel [Paperback]

Sandra Rodriguez Barron (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)

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Book Description

September 5, 2006

When young Monica Winters Borrero loses her luminous mother in an accident at sea, she is exiled from the tropical paradise that was her home. Grieving and cut off from a life among El Salvador's elite, Monica and her American father move to Connecticut, vowing never to look back.

Years later, an intriguing stranger, who has endured a terrible loss of his own, enters Monica's life, bearing an unusual request. Monica is propelled back to her lost world, retracing the shadowy last days of her mother, a marine scientist who had been on the brink of understanding the therapeutic applications of a rare, venomous sea creature. Now, her research is being corrupted by a secret clinic that claims the power to restore consciousness to the comatose.

What Monica discovers will shatter the family's delicate truce with the past, and compel everyone involved to challenge their deepest notions of what it means to be alive. Atmospheric, thought-provoking, and timely. The Heiress of Water is a stunning parable of paradise lost and found.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At 12, Monica Winters is forced to exchange her privileged life in El Salvador as the daughter of the beautiful and headstrong heiress (and amateur marine biologist) Alma Borrero Winters for a humdrum existence in Connecticut with her cuckolded father after unfaithful Alma and her lover are attacked by soldiers at a gathering place for Communist rebels. His body is recovered, but Alma is lost to the sea. Fifteen years later, disinherited by her mother's family, Monica, now a successful massage therapist, is hired by Will Lucero to give Yvette, his comatose wife, a massage. A series of improbable events lands the cast at a clinic in El Salvador where researchers claim to be able to revive comatose patients using the venom of the very cone snail, thought to be extinct, that Monica's mother spent her life searching for. As Will and Monica try to deny their attraction to one another, Monica begins piecing together the truth about her mother's family (and there are many, many things to discover). Though the scenes in El Salvador are vividly rendered, Barron clumsily handles the convoluted plot's ungainly twists, but her debut is intriguing in spite of its excesses. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Secrets and lies drive the intricate plot of this first novel, which is both a gripping mystery and an intimate drama of love and betrayal. Growing up in a wealthy established family in El Salvador at the time of the civil war, Monica learns from her beloved mother, Alma, about the exciting science of the ocean, but after Alma drowns, Monica, 12, moves with her American father to Connecticut. Fifteen years later, she is a physical therapist, and one of her patients, in a coma after a car accident, might be helped by an experimental ocean-shell treatment offered in an El Salvador clinic. Why is Monica's father reluctant for her to return to where her mother died? When they do go back, Monica makes astonishing discoveries, past and present, that make her question, "Who was the fragile one after all?" In a contemporary version of the heroic quest story, Monica's search for home opens up a world of revolutionary politics, science, and passion. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Perennial (September 5, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0061142816
  • ISBN-13: 978-0061142819
  • Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,407,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

25 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.9 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Spiritual Story, November 18, 2006
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This review is from: The Heiress of Water: A Novel (Paperback)
This is a love story, a bit of a mystery, and a journey of the soul. The opening is a little slow and bumpy but the book picks up momentum as the story unfolds with a plot that is both intricate and satisfying, a little like a good Spanish telenovela (and I mean this in the nicest way!). You just want to keep turning the page, and Barron delivers the surprises. Alma's parallel between the sea and immortality gains lyricism as her metaphor gains depth and detail with the unfolding story, setting this story firmly in the genre of spiritual fiction. The ending is both beautiful and emotional revealing the unusual sophistication of this debut writer. Especially interesting is how the author gets into the mind of a catatonic patient struggling to regain consciousness, adding another dimension to this layered tale. There are many beautiful images, romantic scenes, and emotional explosions in this story. All in all it is very satisfying.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars pretty good book, August 10, 2008
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This review is from: The Heiress of Water: A Novel (Paperback)
The Heiress of Water by Sandra Rodriguez Barron is a book i blindly picked up from the bargain bin when i needed something to read and was out of rented books. for that, it was pretty good. Partly set in El Salvador, and partly in Connecticut, it's a very latin american styled book, like Isabelle Allende, who is even quoted on the front. Lots of that magical realism sort of thing, but a little toned down from some authors. The book is about the sea, and 2 generations trying to find medicine from cone shells. This medicine can bring people out of a coma, supposively, or other benefits too. The main character is a woman whose mother was stolen from her by the sea, but just not in the way that she thinks. It's less boring than it sounds. There's a great deal of mystery, although nto who-done-it type mystery, in this book. I would check it out if you're looking for a book that's both smart and entertaining.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, November 12, 2006
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Lauren Doyle (Fort Lauderdale, FL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Heiress of Water: A Novel (Paperback)
An inventive and beautifully written novel. I stayed up all night to finish The Heiress of Water just to see how it would end. I definitely recommend it.
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