The Storyteller's Death

Starred review from August 15, 2022
Cardinal (Category Five) delivers a stunning, magic-infused tale of family ties and secrets. In the 1970s, eight-year-old Isla Larsen Sanchez is sent from New Jersey to Puerto Rico by her mother to live with relatives while Isla’s father is terminally ill. Isla returns to New Jersey after her father’s death, where her mother pulls her out of Catholic school. She struggles to fit in at the public school and continues to spend summers in Puerto Rico. When Isla is 18, she begins to see stories in her head and experience visions of significant events in the lives of long-deceased relatives, such as a story her grandmother told her about monkeys escaping from the zoo. Eventually, Isla learns that she comes from generations of cuentistas, or storytellers, including her recently deceased grandmother. But when the tenor of her visions turns violent (a later iteration of the monkey story ends with a gunshot), Isla has to uncover the secrets her family has been hiding for generations—before they harm or possibly kill her. Cardinal’s storytelling prowess shines in this beautifully imagined and multilayered story, as do her fully developed characters. Fans of sweeping family sagas will enjoy every page. Agent: Linda Camacho, Gallt & Zacker.

October 21, 2022
The cuentistas in Isla Larsen Sanchez's family carry their stories through generations. Isla spends summers on the family compound in Puerto Rico with her great-aunt Alma, and lives the rest of the year in New Jersey with her widowed mother. During the summer of her eighteenth year, she learns that she shares the family gift. She experiences the story of each deceased cuentista in visions that repeat at the same time every day until she understands details customarily left out of their telling. In a story shared between her grandmother and great-aunt, Isla witnesses the death of her great-grandfather and, on repetition, is grazed by the bullet that kills him. In order to understand what really happened, she must ask her family and others who were on the estate at the time to reveal what they know, trying to uncover secrets they've kept for decades. In the process, Isla learns about her family history and the legacies of racism, sexism, and classism she is inheriting. A great read for fans of stories set in the Caribbean and tales of magic, love, and family.

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