Customer Reviews

Meet Me under the Ceiba

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i pre-ordered this book and read it within a couple of days of receiving it. I couldn't put it down. mr. sirias deftly weaves together the non-linear backstory to the headline "trio found guilty in the murder of a dyke." it's a topic that's not given much attention in nicaragua, so I was intrigued to find out more. I was not disappointed; the author vividly recreates the community and characters that played host to the tragedy. As a queer person who lived in nicaragua at the time the story unfolds, i can attest to its accurate portrayal of people and place as well as the "sub-human" perception of the victim that was used by the defense as an attempt to justify her murder. i thank you for writing this book. well done. I hope it gets translated into spanish, i will purchase a copy for my town's library.

There is a reason Silvio Sirias was recently listed as one of [...] "2010 Top Ten 'New' Latino Authors to Watch (and Read)." Meet Me Under the Ceiba (like his last book, Bernardo and the Virgin) is a wonderfully told story AND a vibrant, accurate portrayal of everyday Nicaraguan life. I know because I have been to and lived in nearly all of the small villages where Sirias sets his stories. I can recognize actual street corners and dining rooms in his stories and I've met most of the people he writes about. Even if they are fictional, Sirias's books are peopled by strikingly real Nica characters and his narrative is peppered with sharp sensory details: the sickly sweet taste of Rojita cola, the sour smell of rum-breath, the young man wearing "an old, threadbare Cat-in-the-Hat T-shirt -- probably part of the U.S. shipment sent here after Hurricane Mitch." These details are spot-on and his descriptions do not waste a word.

As for the story of Adela, the narrator of the book puts it best: "Adela Rugama's murder is a chilling story. It's a sobering portrait of human frailty, of what can happen when we allow our weaknesses, our emotional flaws, to take control of our actions. The tale of her death shows how greed, lust, and unrestrained passions can completely cloud our judgment. Just look at everything from your perspective; that is, the perspective of a priest: virtually every single commandment was broken ... Adela Rugama's murder becomes a remarkable moral tale."

Meet Me Under the Ceiba, written by Silvio Sirias, is the chronicle of the murder of a young woman named Adela by an unnamed researcher who became fascinated by her death. Through a series of interviews with her family, friends and even her murderers to try to piece together the events leading up to her death and her last moments.

This book is not necessarily a mystery: we know who her murderers are from the very beginning and we know exactly why they killed her. The narrator uncovers small mysteries that paint a clearer picture of Adela's last day on earth, but what this is really about is giving Adela a fair representation, trying to uncover the lies that have been protecting her murderers.

Adela, a lesbian, was passionately in love with the beautiful Ixelia, a gorgeous young woman who had been abused her whole life and was eventually sold by her mother into a relationship with Don Roque, a powerful and cruel older man. When Adela tries to rescue Ixelia from her fate, crosses the wrong paths and Don Roque and Ixelia's mother, Doña Erlinda, decide to get rid of her once and for all. Adela's story is tragic and heartbreaking; you spend most of the novel hoping that something will change, that Adela will be uncovered as alive. She was so obviously loved in her small community.

I learned a lot about the state of LGBT rights in Nicaragua and it is very difficult to read about. In Nicaragua and much of Latin America, being part of the LGBT community means that in the eyes of some people, you are less than a person. During the investigation and the trial, many people simply referred to Adela as "la cochona", the dyke, never using her name. Adela is reduced to nothing but her sexuality, she no longer has an identity.

Meet Me Under the Ceiba begins with a quote from Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez: "none of us could continue living without an exact knowledge of the place and mission assigned to us by fate." There is certainly some inspiration from Chronicle of a Death Foretold in Sirias' narration, but it is more straightforward in Meet Me Under the Ceiba. There are many intriguing levels of narration since the story is told completely in flashbacks and interviews, the painful reality is that because Adela is no longer here, we will never really know what happened to her.

Meet Me Under the Ceiba is an important novel. It addresses Nicaraguan LGBT rights and also the failure of the judicial system. Most importantly, it paints a tragic portrait of one woman's unfortunate death in the hopes of stopping future deaths. Siarias' story is based on the true murder of Aura Rosa Pavón and at the end he describes which aspects of the story were fact and which were fiction, but in the end I am so grateful that Sirias told this story, because it is absolutely one that needed to be heard. I definitely recommend Meet Me Under the Ceiba, not only for the important issues that it puts out into the open, but also because it is a highly readable novel that will keep you an edge.

Once again Mr. Sirias provides a masterfully written book full of shattered characters. Sirias does a skillful job of showing the details of life in Nicaragua, so that you can virtually see the scene in your mind's eye. He also develops the characters so that they seem real and you feel their pain. This book opens the reader's eyes to the atrocities that humans are capable of inflicting on each other.

I did a double review and since I don't have time to seperate my thoughts on the two books, you get two for the price of one. Enjoy!

Although Silvio Sirias' "Meet Me under the Ceiba" and Horacio Castellanos Moya's "The She-Devil in the Mirror" are both novels about a woman being murdered and both take place in Central America, that is where their similarities end.
"Ceiba" is the story of a reporter investigating the murder of a lesbian woman, Adela, who would never hurt anyone. Everyone in the small Nicaraguan town seems convinced who committed the crime and they even put two people in jail for it. Although I was convinced these two people, the selfish mother of the victim's lover and the rich man she sold her daughter, Ixelia, to were evil, vile people, I was not convinced they physically committed the crime. The reporter talks to anyone who knows anything about Adela and her young lover, including the local priest who condemns their lifestyle and the judge who only wants justice for the victim and her family.
"She-Devil," on the other hand, is told from the point of view of the murdered victim's "so called" best friend. As the story goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that the narrator is quite jealous of her friend's life. While Olga Maria had a great husband and two beautiful daughters plus two or three lovers on the side, Laura, the unreliable narrator, is divorced with no children and seems utterly unhappy with her lot in life. Olga Maria owns a boutique while Laura doesn't seem to have any job or even to have had one in the past. Laura seems to have tried to have affairs with the same lovers that her friend slept with, though she claims she was just trying to help out her friend when she visits these lovers. Laura finally loses it when she discovers her friend slept with her lazy, totally un-sexy ex-husband while they were still married. Although it seems she discovers this later, as the narrator is relating all this to a (imaginary?) friend, we see that she is losing her bearings and ends up institutionalized.
I had an on-line discussion with another reader who read into the story less than I did; he took everything at face value, so in the end, it is difficult to say what actually happened. I suspect that my female sensibilities bring a different perspective to the conclusion of the mystery.
Both stories are filled with illicit sex between lovers, friends and even the occasional paid rendezvous, but "Ceiba" takes place in the countryside in Nicaragua, whereas "She-Devil" takes place in San Salvador, the capital. The poor people, barely eeking out a living in their little town, for the most part, are much more accepting of difference than the rich of San Salvador.
Both authors show us how jealousy and can lead people to places that are worse than Hell and that money often is the root of all evil. Sirius really gets us into the mind of his protagonist, not a difficult task considering that he really was a reporter investigating this woman's death. He wrote the story as fiction so he could fill in details that were never discovered.
Castellanos Moya, on the other hand, gets into the mind of an upper class Salvadoran woman filled with jealousy, and longing for a life that gives her some fulfillment, and Castellanos does this very well.
I recommend both of these books to anyone interested in Central America, its people and history, and its diverse cultures.
Sherrie Miranda
Writer, Coach
sherriemiranda@cox.net - You can also find me on Facebook

What can I say? This book just pulls you in and devours you. It makes you feel part of the story as it's happening.

The author did a great job in reflecting on each character's life, history, and involvement in Adela Rugama's murder. It's interesting how this book reads like a journal and a story at the same time. You feel like an observer and a participant.

This book had all that I was looking for, and I'm glad I read it.

On Christmas Day, Adela Rugama disappeared. She was murdered because she was in love with a woman that was the object of an old man and her mother's obsession. Adela's lover, Ixelia, was the object of desire for most men in the Nicaraguan town of La Curva. She was uneducated and had been pimped by her mother from an early age when she met the handy, swift coffee plantation worker Adela and they became lovers. As Adela seemed to step on others' toes, she was simply "the cochona" they despised and wanted to be rid of...permanently. A college professor, who learns of the murder, becomes engrossed in telling Adela's story. He conducts a number of interviews including Mariela, Adela's older sister, Lizbeth, a mulata shopkeeper and one of Adela's previous conquests, and even those involved in the crime. From them he learns not only the events leading up to and the subsequent murder of Adela but also, of many secrets and shortcomings of the townsfolk.

Meet Me Under the Ceiba is more than a murder mystery of sorts. It presents harsh criticism on the homophobic attitudes still rampant in Nicaragua and towards all GLBT Latinos. One way Sirias exemplifies this throughout the novel is that most of the characters constantly refer to Adela derogatorily as "cochona" (dyke). This is, for some, to make light of her murder. Silvio Sirias has done a wonderful job of writing a variety of female characters that all (except Ixelia's mother, Erlinda) exhibit a great deal of strength and independence in spite of a number of unpleasant circumstances and typical marginalization of women. There is also a strong propensity towards the idea of "women's intutition" as each woman in Adela's life all claimed that their last encounters with her were apparent. With one exception, the men are all portrayed as jealous, obsessive, controlling, and sometimes abusive. Some might want to pull the man bashing card but that's moot since this is based on a true story. Those characteristics have to be in place for a man to be driven to kill because of a beautiful woman. Against the backdrop of what seems to be a well described town in Nicaragua, Sirias sharp, colorful writing explores the little discussed issues of homosexuality in that country and the flaws behind human emotions.

I read this book in a couple of sittings, and as much as I enjoyed it, it also left me feeling profoundly sad that these things still occur, especially knowing that it is based on a true story that happened only a decade or so ago. I love Mr. Sirias' prose, and the way he brings my Nicaragua and her people to life, even though the subject matter is not always so pleasant. I can't wait for another novel set in Nicaragua by Sivio Sirias, because I feel that he can give us Nicaraguan-Americans a voice!

I am a huge fan of Latino literature, however I have been feeling a little disconcerting with the lack of literature coming from the Central American region. In comes this Mr. Sirias, who has captured the region in a prose so mesmerizing, it takes me home. Though I am not from Nicaragua, I have visited and fell in love with Granada, one of the many colonial cities that calls this landscape home and the city in which this story takes place. I can almost see the cobblestone streets and Parque Central. I didn't read the author's first book, instead I was intrigued by Adela Rugama and her story. Captivating, amazing. The characters all come to life, and the description of the towns and pueblitos, make me feel as if I am watching a movie. The Ceiba tree is an important part of Central American culture, there is actually a Honduran city named after it, which is why this book jumped out at me.

The story of Adela Rugama is a story that will stay with me for a long time. Even though her fate is marked from the beginning of the book, it has you wishing she were found alive, but alas, it was not meant to be. My only tiny little annoyance was the repetition of the description of the characters for example, constantly saying "The woman from pearl lagoon" (OK , we get it).

This book has touched me so much that even while doing mundane chores around the house I find myself thinking of its characters. Definitely a must-read.

I purchased the book because it took place in Nicaragua. The content was interesting and reminded me of living in Nicaragua, but the writing style was underdeveloped.