BOOKPATHS

Northeast Brazil

The Seamstress, by Frances de Pontes Peebles (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008)

Set during the political instability of the 1920s and 1930s in the beautiful, but unforgiving landscape, of northeast Brazil, The Seamstress tells the story of Emília and Luzia dos Santos, orphaned sisters raised and trained as seamstresses by their Aunt Sofia in the mountain village of Taquaritinga.  Hoping to escape village life, Luzia, kidnapped by bandits, ultimately chooses the life of an outlaw; while Emília impulsively marries into a wealthy Recife family.  Readers are pulled into the sisters’ stories as they follow their very different paths, physically separated, but always connected by heart and mind.

There was a large map of Brazil, too.  Padre Otto pointed out their state of Pernambuco many times during each lesson.  It was near the top of the republic, longer than it was wide.  Emília thought it looked like an outstretched arm reaching toward the coast.  At the shoulder was the caatinga scrubland – often called the sertão – where water was scarce and only cactus grew.  Padre Otto said that runaway slaves and Dutch soldiers and Indians retreating from the coast had all settled there, protected by the harsh desert climate. Emília pictured these dark and light tribes of men living together, spearing snakes and hawks for their dinners.  At the elbow of the state was her town of Taquaritinga, set on a small mountain range that was the gateway to the scrubland.  At the wrist were the plantations, the stretches of Atlantic forest that had been slashed and burned to grow sugarcane.  At the knuckles was the capital – Recife – with its cobblestone streets, its rows of tightly stacked houses, and its immense port that Emília pictured filled with warships and smoking cannons because of the paintings depicting the Dutch invasion she’d seen in one of Padre Otto’s history books.  And at the fingertips of her state was the ocean. Emília dreamed of visiting that ocean, of putting her toe in its saltwater.  She pictured it as green, dark green, even though the oceans on the map were all painted a powder blue. – from The Seamstress, by Frances de Pontes Peebles

Related Websites

Frances de Pontes Peebles Website

Publisher’s Website

Brazil

Larry Rohter considers the literary reputation of Brazilian novelist Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.

“When the novelist Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis died 100 years ago this month, his passing went little noticed outside his native Brazil. But in recent years he has been transformed from a fringe figure in the English-speaking world into a literary favorite and trendsetter, promoted by much more acclaimed writers and by critics as an unjustly neglected genius.” – from “After a Century, a Literary Reputation Finally Blooms,” by Larry Rohter, The New York Times

San Francisco and St. Helena, California; Meigs County, Ohio; U.S.

The Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) Appreciation Society shares three “Bierce Places” on their website, including two in California, Ambrose Bierce Street in San Francisco and the Ambrose Bierce House in St. Helena.  In Ohio, they note the Ambrose Bierce Historical Marker placed near his Meigs County birthplace.

The Ambrose Bierce House is now an upscale bed and breakfast in St. Helena.  In Bierce’s time, he and his  family used the home as an escape from San Francisco fog.

Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

Larry Rohter visits Jorge Amado’s Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.

“In Portuguese, ‘amado’ means ‘beloved,’ and in more than a score of novels, the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado made clear his eternal passion for Salvador da Bahia, the city that took him in as a teenage boarding student and became his home. Salvador, in turn, loved him back, and even now, more than six years after his death, Amado’s exuberant spirit, aesthetic and characters seem to permeate the streets of the place he described both as ‘the most mysterious and beautiful of the world’s cities’ and ‘the most languid of women.’” – from “Echoes of Amado in the Dark and the Light,” by Larry Rohter, New York Times