Love and Ghost Letters: A Novel

by Chantel Acevedo

Overview

On the day she is born, Josefina Navarro's nursemaid foretells misfortune. But for the young socialite in pre-Castro Cuba, her life in Havana with her Sergeant of police father is idyllic. That is, until she falls in love with Lorenzo, a penniless man who takes her away to the impoverished town of El Cotorro, and her father disowns her. Josefina comes to wish her father dead but regrets it after the Sergeant is assumed killed in a student-led riot. One day, mysterious letters from the Sergeant begin to arrive, telling her the truth about his past. The ghostly letters become her link to love.

Set in Miami and Cuba and covering nearly fifty years of that island's history, Love and Ghost Letters unfolds the lives of the members of the Navarro-Concepción families in the patterns and permutations of memory, and conjures a Cuban setting that evokes mysticism and magic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312340476
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/19/2006
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Chantel Acevedo is a first-generation Cuban-American whose childhood combined American modernity with traditional Cuban values.  She attended the M.F.A. creative writing program at the University of Miami on a James Michener Fellowship, and is the author of Love and Ghost Letters.  She has won two Fulbright Awards for secondary education.

Reading Group Guide

On the outside, Josefina Navarro's life seems fortunate enough—she lives with her father and her nursemaid, Regla, who raises her after the death of her mother in a luxurious home in Vedado, one of Cuba's wealthiest districts. She attends society dances and is courted by all of Havana's elite young bachelors. Enchanted by the rituals of her nursemaid, Josefina learns about the profound mysticism inherent in even the most mundane affairs. Though she is pampered, Josefina feels that her life is without passion or excitement. Her father, Sergeant Antonio Navarro, a Spaniard by birth, is a stern and demanding man whose past is a tightly kept secret.
When she meets and marries Lorenzo Concepción, a poor, reckless young man, the sergeant tells her, "So, you have chosen him…and you will be hungry and miserable all your life." The couple moves to El Cotorro, a poverty-stricken town that is far removed from the Vedado plazas and carefully tended gardens Josefina knew. Lorenzo begins to leave her for months at a time, "looking for work," but in reality, womanizing and carousing all over the island. Even after the birth of two healthy children, Josefina is not happy. This is not the life she had envisioned.
During a political maelstrom, history brings the sergeant to El Cotorro to quell a riot, where he is attacked and presumed dead. But perception is reality on an island in which darkness and light commingle, and magic and truth are one in the same.
When Josefina begins receiving letters from her father, she believes that what she holds are heaven's missives, ghost letters. Through the letters, Josefina comes to know her father intimately, as a ghost and guardian, as he reveals the truth about his life. In the act of writing and reading, she has found a love to fill the empty places in her heart.
Set in Cuba and Miami, covering nearly fifty years of the island's history, LOVE AND GHOST LETTERS unfolds the lives of the Navarro-Concepción families in the patterns and permutations of memory, and conjures a Cuban setting that evokes mysticism and magic.

1. The novel begins with a prophecy about Josefina's life. Do you think it came true? What is the role of fate in the novel?
2. Though Josefina leaves the wealth of Vedado for the poverty of El Cotorro willingly, she still desires the luxuries of her youth. Why did she make that choice to begin with? How are issues of class dealt with in the novel?
3. Josefina is brought up Catholic, and her lover, Abel, forces her to attend Mass. Meanwhile, her nursemaid and adoptive mother, Regla, practices the Afro-Cuban religion of Santería. What does Josefina believe?
4. The book provides a portrait of Cuban life as it evolved in the 20th century. What are some of these changes? How must the Navarro-Concepcíon families adapt?
5. Why is the Sergeant so reluctant to talk about his past? What might it represent for him? Why do you think he chooses to reveal himself through letters?
6. There are many men in Josefina's life—her father, the Sergeant, her husband, Lorenzo, Abel her lover, and her son, Lalo. What do they have in common?
7. What is Soledad's role in the novel? In what ways is she like her mother? Her grandfather?
8. Josefina ultimately manages to forgive Lorenzo's infidelities, and her father's and Abel's deception. Is this ability to forgive a sign of weakness or strength?
9. Why does Josefina burn her father's letters? What would you have done with them?

Editorial Reviews

[An] exceptionally fine first novel…. Acevedo shapes each of her characters with clear-eyed reverence, guiding their steps in measured, lyrical prose that is often breath-taking, exquisite…. And this is the author's genius: the line she walks between fact and fairy tale, history and wistful story, the magic that radiates, naturally, from the quirks and coincidences of daily life and what is (often) too easily celebrated—or dismissed—as otherworldly, supernatural.” —A. Manette Ansay for The Chicago Tribune

“Acevedo is a fine storyteller…. [Love and Ghost Letters] unfolds with a leisurely pleasure that feels like magic realism.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Acevedo, a first-generation Cuban-American, lyrically illustrates the changing social, economic and political landscape in this tumultuous period in Cuba's history. She has filled her novel with enchanting details, down to the red, white and blue paper roses at that first society dance and the recipes Josefina's nanny concocts to make Lorenzo faithful to his wife.” —Miami Herald

“[Acevedo's] writing is luscious, painting beautifully tragic pictures. Love and Ghost Letters takes a hard look at how closely wedded love and money are, without turning away from the ugliness of social inequality. The magic of the narrative is in the weaving of the personal with the public with such a poetic sensibility and fluidity of style that the reader is completely submerged into the trials of a Cuban family and the contradictions of Cuban society.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“...a quirky, charming story of filial love...a distinctly Latin mystique and a style of writing that juxtaposes the mysterious and the mundane.” —Miami Today

“Love and Ghost Letters is an enchanting novel; a heartfelt story, it tells volumes about the intimate life and loves of a family in pre-Castro Cuba. Along the way, it captures, beautifully, the atmosphere and emotions of a time which, both Cuban Americans and many an American reader, will find both reminiscent and fulfilling. A great debut.” —Oscar Hijuelos, author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love: A Novel and A Simple Habana Melody

From the Publisher

Love and Ghost Letters is an enchanting novel; a heartfelt story, it tells volumes about the intimate life and loves of a family in pre-Castro Cuba. Along the way, it captures, beautifully, the atmosphere and emotions of a time which, both Cuban Americans and many an American reader, will find both reminiscent and fulfilling. A great debut.

author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love: Oscar Hijuelos

Acevedo's debut novel is a multigenerational story of life and love in Cuba from 1934 to 1969. When Josefina Navarro is born, her nurse foresees an unhappy life. As a young woman, Josefina seems determined to realize this destiny. Bored with the privilege she has known, she desires romance and risk-both of which are embodied in Lorenzo Concepci-n. When Josefina marries him, she leaves Havana for a squalid village, and she trades the protective love of her father for her husband's persistent infidelity and aversion to gainful employment. Years pass, miserably. After he almost dies in a riot, Antonio Navarro determines to reconcile with his daughter. Unfortunately, Navarro has been reported dead, and, arriving at Josefina's house, he overhears what he thinks is satisfaction as she speaks of his death. Despondent, he leaves Cuba for Miami. From there, he writes loving letters to Josefina and he pays El Cotorro's butcher to hand-deliver these missives. Josefina doesn't see these letters as evidence of her father's survival; instead, she decides that he's writing from heaven. She falls in love with the man who-unbeknownst to her-conveys these "ghost letters." Josefina will lose her lover and find him again. She will rediscover her love for her husband, too, after he is rendered silent and immobile by a stroke. She will even reunite with her father, but none of this feels particularly significant. This story is full of incident and detail, but the action seems inconsequential and the lyrical descriptions never add up to real, knowable characters. It hardly matters, then, that Acevedo has doomed her creations to an inverted magical realism, that-with her fake miracle and her fruitless dabblingin Santer'a-she invokes enchantment only to deny it, and she offers little in the way of more mundane hope. Josefina's elderly menage a trois, her daughter's escape to Florida: The first is dubious, the second is only briskly described and both are shadowed by Castro's revolution, introduced by Acevedo in an epilogue. Listless, unfocused, dispiriting.

Kirkus Reviews