The Heiress of Water - by Sandra Rodriguez Barron (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

When young Monica Winters Borrero loses her luminous mother in an accident at sea, she is exiled from the tropical paradise that was her home. Grieving and cut off from a life among El Salvador's elite, Monica and her American father move to Connecticut, vowing never to look back.

Years later, an intriguing stranger, who has endured a terrible loss of his own, enters Monica's life, bearing an unusual request. Monica is propelled back to her lost world, retracing the shadowy last days of her mother, a marine scientist who had been on the brink of understanding the therapeutic applications of a rare, venomous sea creature. Now, her research is being corrupted by a secret clinic that claims the power to restore consciousness to the comatose.

What Monica discovers will shatter the family's delicate truce with the past, and compel everyone involved to challenge their deepest notions of what it means to be alive. Atmospheric, thought-provoking, and timely. The Heiress of Water is a stunning parable of paradise lost and found.

Review Quotes

"Richly conceived and lyrically written, a fine, magical novel." -- --James Hall, bestselling author of Forests of the Night --James Hall, bestselling author of Forests of the Night --James Hall, bestselling author of Forests of the Night

"Sandra Rodriguez Barron's exuberant prose yields an immensely entertaining reading experience" -- --Isabel Allende, bestselling author of Zorro and Daughter of Fortune

"A stunning literary achievement, a tense, propulsive, hauntingly beautiful tale of the first order." -- --John Dufresne, author of Johnny Too Bad

"Secrets and lies drive the intricate plot of this first novel, which is both a gripping mystery and an intimate drama of love and betrayal." -- Booklist

"[B]eautiful and haunting. Like her heroine, first novelist Barron has a Salvadoran mother and knows the country of which she writes. " -- Library Journal