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Gloria Damasco Mysteries #4
Death at Solstice: A Gloria Damasco Mystery
Chicana detective Gloria Damasco has a ''dark gift,'' an extrasensory prescience that underscores her investigations and compels her to solve numerous cases. This time, the recurring vision haunting her dreams contains two pairs of dark eyes watching her in the night, a phantom horse and rider, and the voice of a woman pleading for help. But most disquieting of all is Gloria's sensation of being trapped underwater, unable to free herself, unable to breathe.
When Gloria is asked to help the owners of the Oro Blanco winery in California's Shenandoah Valley, she finds herself on the road to the legendary Gold Country. And she can't help but wonder if the ever-more persistent visions might foreshadow this new case that involves the theft of a family heirloom, a pair of antique diamond and emerald earrings rumored to have belonged to Mexico's Empress Carlota.
Soon Gloria learns that there s more to the case than stolen jewelry. Mysterious accidents, threatening anonymous notes, the disappearance of a woman believed to be a saint, and a ghost horse thought to have belonged to notorious bandit Joaquin Murrieta are some of the pieces Gloria struggles to fit together. A woman's gruesome murder and the discovery of a group of young women from Mexico being held against their will in an abandoned house send Gloria on a fateful journey to a Witches' Sabbath to find the final pieces of the puzzle before someone else is killed.
Corpi weaves the rich cultural history of California's Gold Country with a suspenseful mystery in this latest installment in the Gloria Damasco Mystery series.
When Gloria is asked to help the owners of the Oro Blanco winery in California's Shenandoah Valley, she finds herself on the road to the legendary Gold Country. And she can't help but wonder if the ever-more persistent visions might foreshadow this new case that involves the theft of a family heirloom, a pair of antique diamond and emerald earrings rumored to have belonged to Mexico's Empress Carlota.
Soon Gloria learns that there s more to the case than stolen jewelry. Mysterious accidents, threatening anonymous notes, the disappearance of a woman believed to be a saint, and a ghost horse thought to have belonged to notorious bandit Joaquin Murrieta are some of the pieces Gloria struggles to fit together. A woman's gruesome murder and the discovery of a group of young women from Mexico being held against their will in an abandoned house send Gloria on a fateful journey to a Witches' Sabbath to find the final pieces of the puzzle before someone else is killed.
Corpi weaves the rich cultural history of California's Gold Country with a suspenseful mystery in this latest installment in the Gloria Damasco Mystery series.
239 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
28 people want to read
About the author
Lucha Corpi
24 books12 followersPoet, novelist, and children's book writer Lucha Corpi was born in a small town in Mexico called Jaltipan in the state of Veracruz, in 1945. She came to Berkeley, California as a young wife and student at the age of 19. Along with having a child named Arthur, she continued her education and received degrees from UC-Berkeley and San Francisco State University. She currently lives in Oakland, California and has been a tenured teacher in the Oakland Public Schools Neighborhood Centers Program since 1977.
Corpi is the recipient of numerous awards and citations, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Prize in fiction, and the Multicultural Publishers Exchange Book Award of Excellence in Adult Fiction. She was president of the Centro Chicano de Escritores (Chicano Writers Center), and she is also a member of the international feminist mystery novel circle, Sisters in Crime. Corpi's works include two books of poetry, Palabras de Mediodia/Noon Words and Variaciones Sobre una Tempsted/Variations on a Storm, a children's book, Where Fireflies Dance/Ahi, Donde Bailen los Luciernagas, the novel Delia's Song, and four mystery novels, Crimson Moon, Eulogy for a Brown Angel, Cactus Blood, and Black Widow's Wardrobe, from the Gloria Damasco series. She is also the editor of Mascaras, which contains works from 15 Latina writers.
Corpi says she uses her books "to study all forms of racism, from the very blatant -- police harassing someone just because they're Mexican American -- to the more insidious racism inside our own families" (Beitiks). She follows the stories of women and poor people, immigrant struggles, and of historical/mythical figures. Corpi describes her reason for writing as, "I can remember my grandmother saying, 'There is no justice in this world. ' I think that's why I write--to bring justice into the world" (Beitiks). Corpi uses both Spanish and English in her works. When writing poetry, she uses Spanish, but when writing fiction, she primarily uses English.
Originally published in 1980, Palabras de Medioda/Noon Words, helped to firmly establish Corpi as a Chicana poet. The poetry was written in Spanish, and Catherine Rodriguez-Nieto translated it into English. Reissued in 2001, this book explores personal feelings about the role of women, themes of death and love, and the myth of La Malinche, to name a few. In the preface of the novel, Tey Diana Rebolledo writes, "This book of poems is a clear lyrical narrative of a woman's struggle against silence and of the desire to express herself" (xviii). Within the poetry of the book, Corpi incorporates into her verse ideas of daily-life experiences, consciousness and feeling, and actors on the stage of history.
Her second book of poetry, published in 1990, is entitled Variaciones Sobre una Tempsted/Variations on a Storm. This book proves that Corpi's greatest talent lies in verse. Unfiltered by the standards of a novel, Corpi's poetry is a composition of words that are arranged carefully enough to hide a ghost. At times, it seems that that is what Corpi does. Behind her poetry lies a history of passion and pain. Although it may be history, it is alive, and very much so in her writing. Corpi has the ability to project her own personal feelings as one woman onto a larger scale that encompasses her Mexican heritage. The poetry, written in Spanish and translated into English by Catherine Rodriguez-Nieto, is constructed in such a way that it will keep you walking through it in order to find its true depths.
Lucha Corpi unites imagination with the memories of childhood in her charming children's book Where the Fireflies Dance/ Ahi, Donde Bailen los Luciernagas. In this book, she stresses the importance of music, storytelling, and family in her life, and how these things have helped her to find a path to her own destiny. Her story begins when, one night as a child, her main character and main character's brother venture
Corpi is the recipient of numerous awards and citations, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Prize in fiction, and the Multicultural Publishers Exchange Book Award of Excellence in Adult Fiction. She was president of the Centro Chicano de Escritores (Chicano Writers Center), and she is also a member of the international feminist mystery novel circle, Sisters in Crime. Corpi's works include two books of poetry, Palabras de Mediodia/Noon Words and Variaciones Sobre una Tempsted/Variations on a Storm, a children's book, Where Fireflies Dance/Ahi, Donde Bailen los Luciernagas, the novel Delia's Song, and four mystery novels, Crimson Moon, Eulogy for a Brown Angel, Cactus Blood, and Black Widow's Wardrobe, from the Gloria Damasco series. She is also the editor of Mascaras, which contains works from 15 Latina writers.
Corpi says she uses her books "to study all forms of racism, from the very blatant -- police harassing someone just because they're Mexican American -- to the more insidious racism inside our own families" (Beitiks). She follows the stories of women and poor people, immigrant struggles, and of historical/mythical figures. Corpi describes her reason for writing as, "I can remember my grandmother saying, 'There is no justice in this world. ' I think that's why I write--to bring justice into the world" (Beitiks). Corpi uses both Spanish and English in her works. When writing poetry, she uses Spanish, but when writing fiction, she primarily uses English.
Originally published in 1980, Palabras de Medioda/Noon Words, helped to firmly establish Corpi as a Chicana poet. The poetry was written in Spanish, and Catherine Rodriguez-Nieto translated it into English. Reissued in 2001, this book explores personal feelings about the role of women, themes of death and love, and the myth of La Malinche, to name a few. In the preface of the novel, Tey Diana Rebolledo writes, "This book of poems is a clear lyrical narrative of a woman's struggle against silence and of the desire to express herself" (xviii). Within the poetry of the book, Corpi incorporates into her verse ideas of daily-life experiences, consciousness and feeling, and actors on the stage of history.
Her second book of poetry, published in 1990, is entitled Variaciones Sobre una Tempsted/Variations on a Storm. This book proves that Corpi's greatest talent lies in verse. Unfiltered by the standards of a novel, Corpi's poetry is a composition of words that are arranged carefully enough to hide a ghost. At times, it seems that that is what Corpi does. Behind her poetry lies a history of passion and pain. Although it may be history, it is alive, and very much so in her writing. Corpi has the ability to project her own personal feelings as one woman onto a larger scale that encompasses her Mexican heritage. The poetry, written in Spanish and translated into English by Catherine Rodriguez-Nieto, is constructed in such a way that it will keep you walking through it in order to find its true depths.
Lucha Corpi unites imagination with the memories of childhood in her charming children's book Where the Fireflies Dance/ Ahi, Donde Bailen los Luciernagas. In this book, she stresses the importance of music, storytelling, and family in her life, and how these things have helped her to find a path to her own destiny. Her story begins when, one night as a child, her main character and main character's brother venture
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February 8, 2010
This is the second title in this series that I've read. This story is more tightly written than the first of her novels. The California history is very interesting and her detective is unusual. The choice of a middle aged woman who does not possess the strength of a much younger woman is refreshing.
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