Catalina is born into privilege as a daughter of the president of Guatemala about thirty years after the Spanish invasion. However, she does not fully embrace that identity since her late mother has native blood. Catalina’s promise to her dying mother was to preserve the Popol Vuh, a collection of native Mayan writings describing their spiritual conception of the world. Her father has ruled as a moderate who seeks peace between the native tribes and the Spanish colonizers, but ethnic and religious conflict between the indigenous people and the Spanish has continued to intensify nonetheless.
Despite being treated as a Spaniard – and a privileged one at that – Catalina takes risk after risk to preserve the text of the Popol Vuh, a historical document still around today. In so doing, she discovers a deeper meaning of love, family, loyalty, and her native identity. Since this is a work of fiction, there’s plenty of action to boot that keeps the pages turning. Scarcely a paragraph is wasted in the entire 280-page tale. The writing and plot action are tightly constructed.
Still, Sofia Robleda clearly casts modern themes upon ancient times with this text. While I’m certain that independent women like Catalina, LGBTQ+ couples, and drama around cultural preservation existed in the 1500s, I doubt they all converged all at once around one focused plot. Despite this shortcoming, this book provides some insight into ancient Guatemalan history and shines a light around the brutal Spanish conquest of native peoples. While school textbooks can cast conquering Europeans in a noble light, Robleda rightly demonstrates that crude financial greed motivated much of the colonialist venture.
This book is entertaining and enlightening – a good combination for a work of historical fiction. Sadly, the implausibility keeps this book from transitioning from good to great. It does beneficially share about the cultural beauty of indigenous peoples and conveys the importance of cultural preservation. As the afterward shares, the Popol Vuh is preserved today, but ironically only through the pen of a Spanish Dominican monk. Cultural preservation is a very human virtue transcending any one group, but it’s a task that must be taken deliberately. Robleda’s tale reminds us of that while pushing us to turn the pages.
Daughter of Fire: A Novel
By Sofia Robleda
Copyright (c) 2024
Amazon Crossing
ASIN B0CFD7PTKZ
Page Count: 280
Genre: Historical Fiction
www.amazon.com