Bruised Hibiscus - Softcover

Nunez, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345451090 ISBN 13: 9780345451095

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2003

Synopsis

The year is 1954. A white woman’s body, stuffed in a coconut bag, has washed ashore in Otatiti, Trinidad, and the British colony is rife with rumors. In two homes, one in a distant shantytown, the other on the outskirts of a former sugar cane estate, two women hear the news and their blood runs cold. Rosa, the white daughter of a landowner, and Zuela, the adopted “daughter” of a Chinese shop owner used to play together as girls—and witnessed something terrible behind a hibiscus bush many years ago.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Nunez, PhD, is the bestselling author of 10 novels, including Bruised Hibiscus, winner of an American Book Award. Nunez’s book Boundaries was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice and was a 2012 NAACP Image Award nominee. She immigrated to the United States from Trinidad and is a distinguished professor at Hunter College, the City University of New York.

From Publishers Weekly

"Caribbean gothic" aptly describes Nunez's third novel (after Beyond the Limbo Silence). The darkly lush story (based on a real-life crime) is rife with symbolism, ominous powers and fever-pitched tension between races and classes. In 1954, the mutilated body of a white female doctor washes ashore on Otahiti beach, Trinidad. When two local women--who as childhood friends bonded intensely after witnessing a young girl being attacked and molested behind a hibiscus bush--hear of the murder, they each decide to pilgrimage to a neighboring town to pray to Our Lady of Fatima. On the way, the women, Rosa and Zuela, recognize each other, and rekindle their friendship, nurturing a sisterhood that will change their lives. Rosa grew up neglected by her British, adulterous parents, and married Cedric, a tormented black school headmaster who lashes out cruelly at his faithful wife. Cedric taunts her with the idea that the murdered woman was a wife caught "in flagrante delicto" by her husband. Zuela's life has been equally harsh. At age 11, she was given away by her Venezuelan father to a merchant and opium addict, Ho Sang (or "Chinaman"), for whom she has borne 10 children in as many years. Treated badly by Chinaman, Zuela stands up to him only when she fears he will involve her sons in his illicit trade. The two women now lean on each other for strength to transform their lives and leave their husbands, but readers may believe that the true salvation in this book arises not from the hard-won peace they find but from the incantatory, authentic Trinidadian dialect with which Nunez deftly infuses the dark, devastating tale with spirit and heart. Agent, Ivy Fischer Stone. (Apr.) FYI: Beyond the Limbo Silence won the 1999 Independent Award for Multicultural Fiction.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0345451090
• ISBN 13: 9780345451095
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306