Novel Description

Annie Rush is a thirty-four year old Minnesotan, married for 12 years to Sam, and mother of two boys. On the surface, she seems to be living every woman's dream: loyal husband, adorable sons, an interesting job. But a tragedy haunts her, making her restless when she should be content: her identical twin sister died in a horrifying farm accident when the girls were nine years old. More family problems ensued, spurring her older brother Hub to leave home for good. Annie has had no contact with Hub for decades, but the death of their mother prompts her to finally seek her long-lost sibling.

Annie's search takes her far away from her family, to Oaxaca, Mexico, where the trail of her brother heats up. While there, she meets Joe, an engaging Berkeley professor, who is staying in the same inn. Oaxaca is vibrant with Christmas celebrations, as well as with the Night of the Radishes festival, a time when villagers carve tableaux from giant radishes they grow to enter in the yearly competition. In the midst of these colorful festivities, Annie must decide whether her love for her husband is great enough to resist Joe, and, ultimately, who was to blame for her sister's death.

Benitez's new novel is about family secrets; about the stresses and strains in long-term marriage, and about one woman who has to travel alone, far from home, before she can learn who she truly is.

An Excerpt

"...We're in (doña Clarita's) altar room, one of several tin-roofed rooms built behind a tall wooden gate and around a grassless patio made pretty by geraniums and common daisies growing in pots and manteca cans. A lone tree, a lime from the looks of its fruit, shades the area.... In preparation for the ritual, I sat under the tree, and doña Clarita (a birdlike woman in her fifties perhaps, with, of all things, one wandering eye) held my hands (her hands were hot, her grasp firm) as I recounted my story. I told it in English, which was not a problem, she said. A true story is a story, no matter what language is used to convey it. And it's not so much the story's content that's important, she went on. What's important is that it be told. That it be brought up from the heart, pushed out by the breath, released into the air. Freed. Freed to mingle and collide with all the other freed stories permeating the air around us. It's where stories belong, doña Clarita said. Outside us, not trapped and calcified within, weighing us down like sea anchors.

"Doña Clarita's altar room smells of burning candlewax, the pungency of incense and the fragrance of rosemary branches tied together into bundles. The room is smoky and dim. Flickering votives set along the altar's shelves provide the only light. Objects crowd the shelves: photographs, holy cards, figurines, rosaries. When I first stepped in, I didn't pause to study what surrounded me. I simply laid myself down upon the shiny foil cross as doña Clarita directed me to do, trying with all my might to trust what I was doing, to trust what was being done to me."

Reviews

Discussion Questions For Reading Groups

Background Information

"THE SAVING GRACE OF STORY"
by Sandra Benítez

Significance of the Title

Buy the Book
Night of the Radishes. Book is available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and your local bookstores.