The Publication of Meet Me Under the Ceiba: A Done Deal

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.
Daphne du Maurier

The building of the architecture of a novel—the craft of it—is something I never tire of.
John Irving


The contract is in the mail.

Well . . . sort of.

Over a week ago I received from Arte Público Press, University of Houston, the paperwork necessary to begin the process of publishing Meet Me Under the Ceiba. What has delayed the contract’s prompt return is the author’s questionnaire—six pages of questions I need to answer in order to help Arte Público Press publicize the book. After my experience with the publication of Bernardo and the Virgin, I’ve come to understand the importance of promoting one’s work, and this time around I will pay much closer attention to the business aspect of the writer’s life.

But the great news is that Meet Me Under the Ceiba, after experiencing an odyssey worthy of a book itself, will at last make it into print. (Someday the manuscript’s journey will become the subject of a blog entry.)

Arte Público Press has yet to set a release date, but as soon as they do I will announce it here.

In the meantime, here’s the tentative teaser (this is the feature usually found in the back cover of a novel):

One Christmas evening, Adela Rugama, a woman known for her “scandalous lifestyle,” is murdered. The circumstances surrounding her death alters the lives of the residents of the Nicaraguan town of La Curva and the surrounding communities.

Three and a half years later, a US college professor arrives in Nicaragua, the homeland of his parents, on a summer lecture assignment. After learning about Adela’s death, whom he had met four years earlier, he promises Mariela, the surviving sister, to unravel the truth behind the woman’s final moments.

Fulfilling the pledge leads the narrator through a labyrinthine entanglement of love, lust, deceit, jealousy, prejudice, greed, mystical visions, and passions gone awry while offering readers an enthralling look into everyday Nicaraguan life.

Inspired by a true incident widely reported in the Nicaraguan press, Meet Me Under the Ceiba will remind readers of Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The tale of Adela Rugama’s murder and its aftermath makes for a mysterious, haunting, and harrowing novel that’s destined to remain etched in the minds of readers.

* Winner of the 2006-2007 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize—University of California, Irvine.