I was intrigued to read and learn about the brutal history of a race massacre in El Salvador. The first half of the book wove language, culture, and politics to tell the story of Consuelo and Graciela, sisters taken from their volcano home to live on eggshells in the city.
The second half of the book fell apart for me. Wandering characters with wandering storylines didn't lend to depth or interest. The tone became erratic and included the ponderings of ghosts who forced action.
I'm glad I finished but struggled to get there.

This book follows two Indigenous women in El Salvador as they are forcibly taken from their community and navigate the rest of the world during their lives in the 1920s-1940s. It's a beautiful saga with unique points of view, as well as engrossing prose and story overall. I definitely recommend for fans of literary historical fiction. A huge thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of an eARC in exchange for my review!

The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera is an epic debut novel that spans decades in El Salvador and follows two sisters from a coffee plantation near a volcano to the capital, San Salvador. In a haunting and often gripping story, Balibrera shows how personal lives are impacted by and intertwined with history in this well-researched book. I loved the author’s use of fantasy and myth fused with history as well as incorporating four deceased women as guides. She takes us into a dark chapter of El Salvador’s history with a hatred and massacre of indigenous people. There are also scenes of El Salvador’s breathtaking beauty as well as the Golden Age of Hollywood and Paris during World War II in this epic debut. Thank you to Pantheon and NetGalley for the eARC. Recommended. I look forward to more from Gina Maria Balibrera after this powerful debut.

Perhaps the best way to summarize this novel is to just say, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Of course, this doesn’t span a century and the narrating ghosts make sure neither the MCs or you are ever alone. But I think you get the point: sweeping magical realism set in the jungles and towns of Latin America - in this case, El Salvador.

It takes about fifty pages to figure out the main characters: Consuelo and Graciela. We learn their story from their friends who are, um…dead. And that’s not a spoiler, since in the very first chapter, they tell us they’re dead, of some horrible political massacre. It’s set in a series of small towns, a coffee economy, on the side of a volcano. Eventually, it moves to California and Paris.

Tremendous description here. Wow, what a setting! The author conveys both the danger and beauty of the jungle. Also, the voices are quite poetic. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional f-bomb here, since the interactions between characters are emotional, meaningful, and full of love. Ghosts are meant to be haunting, and these girls are experts.

Now, if you love magic (and not the romantasy kind), you’ll be in heaven (or wherever the ghosts are). There are named spirits that actually show up and swirl around the main characters. The General does something bad, and gets chased by a spectral legend. The dead girls visit the living, right when they needed it. Very cool.

However…

This is meant to be read slowly. And that’s not what I do. I prefer to be entertained, told a story I can easily follow. The first fifty pages here did the opposite. It was hard to understand who the narrators were. The timeline flies all over. The claims to be dead threw me off. There’s basically no direction. Again, beautifully described, but if you want to follow what’s happening, you need to read paragraphs over and over. The narrator will be telling us about Socorrito, but then digress into a story about a spirit, and not come back to the original story. This made it the writing less like Gabriel García Márquez and more like Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace And certainly not Isabel Allende. Things just didn’t connect. For me, at least.

It gets better when Consuelo and Graciela meet in the General's home. Better still when they escape. But even there, the lack of a linear plot wrought havoc on my attention span. I admit, I skimmed the ending.

Also, have your Spanish-English dictionary handy. I have a rusty grip on the language, and even I had to Google translate a few words. In fact, the author goes full phrases in the language without offering a translation. I can see those who don’t speak or understand the language getting rather annoyed.

But that’s how magical realism goes. Usually. 100 Years remains one of my favorites, but the plot there is more traditional. It’s meant to flit in and out of consciousness, back and forth through time, circling what’s real and what’s not. The author does a good job of taking us to her worlds, both real and imagined. Telling where, when, and why we’re there, however, was a shortcoming.

I recommend this: recognize that I’m the wrong person to review this kind of book. My opinions probably ignore the features that make this book great. I could pick out things I like, but saying it’s bad based on my aversion of the genre just isn’t fair.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

A saucy, searingly original debut about two sisters raised in the shadow of El Salvador’s brutal dictator, El Gran Pendejo, and their flight from genocide, which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to cannery row, each followed by a chorus of furies, the ghosts of their murdered friends, who aren’t yet done telling their stories.

There's a dictatorship, genocide, refugee resettlement in the States, and a little bit of magic. What a combo, right? So much happened in this book. It follows the story of two daughters who get separated at birth and reconnect multiple times. The first part of the book they are both in El Salvador and both have a connection to the dictator, the General. Eventually, the General goes after the girls village and murders everyone in it. The girls survive and then escape (separately) to the United States. The second part of the book is their journey after escaping El Salvador. The magical piece is all of their friends are haunting them throughout their lives and the story is from their perspective with their commentary as ghosts.

This book wasn't for me. It was very graphic and disturbing and was very long. I know this book is for some people based on reviews, but it wasn't for me. The Spanish cultural barrier was hard for me to overcome. There was a lot of Spanish words used throughout and I wish there was some translation for some words - I definitely missed the meaning of some parts because of the language barrier.

My rating: 2 stars

Thank you NetGalley and Pantheon for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Evocative and captivating!

This book is an excellent story woven through with Salvadoran mythology that continuously pulls you right in! It is a book that demands to be read, and you will want time to stop so you can simply keep reading. Written with lots of Spanglish moments, I couldn't help but enjoy the way this book was constructed. Told from the perspectives of four ghosts, whose personalities transcend the pages, the story molds into an unforgettable tale that paints the picture of political turmoil and genocide, and how that affects the lives of these girls as we follow Graciela and Consuelo.

The author truly created an incredible story, and it's hard to find the words to really describe how great this book is. This is the kind of book you'd want to keep on hand forever.

This is a tale of sisterhood, colonization, survival, immigration, war, corruption, hope, love, and El Salvadoran mythology woven into an epic story beautifully written. The Spanish interspersed in the writing was both powerful and, for someone who only knows bits of the language like me, complicated. This, along with the eloquent literary repetitiveness, resulted in it taking me a lot longer to read this book than my usual. I wanted it to end, but was really invested in the characters so wanted to see how their lives unfolded. This is definitely a work to read when you have time to put it down and process before picking it back up again. It is an important contribution to new perspectives on 20th century colonization and the reverberating destruction it has caused to indigenous peoples as a group and individuals.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor: Pantheon, Netgalley, and the author for early access to this powerful work.

Haunting. Devastating. Beautiful. Those are three words I'd use to describe "The Volcano Daughters".

You're transported back in time to the coffee plantations of El Salvador in the heart of volcano country. Through the voices of the dead, you're told the stories of Graciela and Consuelo, two sisters who were torn apart and brought back time and time again. At four years old, Consuelo was ripped from her village by her father and brought up in the capital. While she lived a luxurious life, Graciela was being raised to work. The death of their father brings Graciela to the capital where she's taken from her mother and forced to serve as the General's medium. Together, Graciela and Consuelo grow and plan an escape before tragedy stops them. Their lives get separated, but they're guided by the ghosts of their friends as they each seek out new lives.

Gina María Balibrera has illustrated the world in the 1920's and 30's through the eyes of Salvadorans, painting a picture of the challenges this culture faced. Weaved throughout is a message that we can look to our past to learn how to move forward in the future. Maybe we're not guided by the voices of the dead, but we can create a better world by telling these stories.

Balibrera's prose is beautiful and enchants you from the very first page. It immerses you into the emotions which run high throughout. Our characters face love and loss and grief. Consuelo and Graciela navigate those emotions differently as a result of their different upbringing, creating two vastly different, and equally enthralling, stories.

I'm so grateful to NetGalley and Pantheon for the opportunity to read an e-galley in exchange for an honest review!

The plot was very well thought out. I was impressed with how many historical events and variety of people within the story. The main characters were very interesting to read about. The writing was absolutely heart wrenching at times. I think the author’s style is very unique.

However, I could not stand the pace of the first part. It was way too slow for me. I almost quit reading at least two times. For me, part one felt too much like rambling and the main character really didn’t have the freedom to choose their actions. The magical realism aspects really didn’t come in to play until the later parts too.

Part two was infinitely more interesting where the main characters actually got to choose what to do. This is when I really started to care for the characters. Part three was a little bit difficult to get through emotionally, but I did enjoy how much the author included magical realism in this part. I enjoyed many aspects of the book, but overall, I’m not sure if the unique characteristics of the book outcompete the slow pacing and emotional toll.

Gina María Balibrera's sweeping, moving debut novel The Volcano Daughters follows two sisters, Consuelo and Graciela, through their tumultuous lives in El Salvador and beyond. The novel also uses a Greek chorus-style voice of four girls who didn't survive, and instead follow the two sisters on their journey. Balibrera's writing is beautiful and the narrative is ambitious, covering many years and places as the sisters flee El Salvador for safety and new lives while carrying the past with them. While the narrators often enrich the story, the jumps in style and perspective made it confusing to read at times and made this more challenging to get into. The novel also feels a bit too long and drags at point, and likely could have been tightened up and trimimed. Balibrera is clearly talented, though, so I'm curious what else she will write.

The Volcano Daughters by Gina Maria Baliberera follows two sisters and their journeys from rural El Salvador after the turn of the nineteenth century to their ultimate home and reconnection in the United States. They experience joy, terror, sorrow, and ambition as they deal with kidnappings, assaults, genocide, relationships, motherhood, friendship, and more.

This well-written debut novel is mainly focused on remaining true to yourself, even when you are not entirely sure what that means, and in the face of both every day life and extraordinary circumstances. The Greek Chorus style additions to the main narrative were great in adding context, history and sometimes a lighter moment. It was a wonderful way to illustrate how we carry the memories, experiences and attitudes of the past along with us to influence how we react to situations in the present. My only small complaint is that the second half seemed to meander more than needed and dragged the pacing down in a few places.

Overall, this is a strong, original start to the author’s novel-writing career, and I look forward to reading more from her.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for providing the digital ARC.

4 stars

The formatting made this way too complicated to read. Perhaps I will try this book again , but in a print format, because the premise seems interesting.

DNF at 5%.

I can totally see the appeal of this book to others but unfortunately the writing style is just not it for me. I’m having trouble keeping track of who is speaking about what, and the switching between Spanish and English multiple times per sentence is throwing me off. I wish I enjoyed the writing a bit more because I was excited about this storyline and so think overall the writing sounds beautiful, but is just confusing.

The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera is a powerful and evocative debut novel that masterfully intertwines themes of family, heritage, and resilience against a vibrant and tumultuous backdrop. Set in El Salvador, the story follows two sisters, Graciela and Consuelo, who are separated at a young age and later reunite under extraordinary circumstances.

Balibrera’s storytelling is both poetic and visceral, drawing readers into the lives of her richly developed characters. The narrative is endlessly surprising and vividly imaginative, bursting with lush life and historical depth. The author skillfully weaves Spanish words and phrases throughout the novel, adding authenticity and a deeper connection to the cultural setting.

The novel’s strength lies in its ability to blend historical fiction with elements of magical realism, creating a unique and immersive reading experience. The depiction of the sisters’ journey from the shadow of a brutal dictator to their flight across the globe is both heart-wrenching and inspiring.

While the pacing can be uneven at times, and some readers might find the interwoven Spanish challenging, these aspects do not detract significantly from the overall impact of the story. The Volcano Daughters is a testament to the enduring power of memory, community, and the unbreakable bond of sisterhood.

Overall, this novel is a dazzling accomplishment and a must-read for fans of historical fiction and magical realism. Highly recommended!

A sweeping, enchanting work of historical fiction and magical realism set around two sisters from El Salvador. It's a heartbreaking story full of violence, grief, and trauma, but also full of joy, creativity, and hope. I love the unique narrative voice of the story and the different corners of history the characters find themselves in. The second half of the book was faster paced and more compelling for me than the first, so if you find yourself thinking about quitting, I recommend sticking around!

🌋 Book Review 🌋

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for an arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Publication: August 20, 2024

Rating: It was okay!

I wanted to love this book so much more than I did. I always love historical fiction because I end up learning something new.

The two biggest things that I struggled with are the intermingled Spanish phrases and the Narrators.

The Spanish phrases are minor. I knew enough that I could figure out most of the words. However, I think that may deter other readers.

The Narrators are four girls that are ghosts that follow the sisters. When they interject their thoughts, it would take me out of the main story. I don’t think I was quite the intended audience for this one.

For fans of:
🌋 Historical fiction
🫘 Magical realism
🌋 Lyrical writing
🫘 Spanish phrases sprinkled in
🌋 Where the Crawdads Sing

This book was such a gut punch but in the best way possible.

The Volcano Daughters follows the plight of two sisters, Consuelo and Graciela, who flee El Salvador during its brutal dictatorship in the 1980s. They escape the genocide in their indigenous village and are separated across the globe, circumstance and fate bringing them back together.

The book is raw, and I mean raw. Like clawing open your chest raw. The narration is done by the sisters’ friends from their village, who are assumed to have died in the massacre. It gives a mystical flare to the story telling, knowing that the ones telling it are ghosts. The prose is beautiful, weaving in Spanish and English together to full tell the sisters’ story. You feel the emotions come out of the page and into your heart - its simply genius.

The characters are also so vivid - you see their struggles and feelings and you feel like you just want to give them a hug and let them have peace and happiness, even if its not possible for them.

The one thing I thought would make the storytelling better was the pacing. Because we are covering many years, there is a lot of cover which bogs down the plot flow a lot. It doesn’t necessarily take away from the total experience, but definitely something to note.

Its not a dynamic plot by any means, but its a wonderfully done historical fiction about an often overlooked area of history. If you need to just sob over a book, this is the one for you.

I think that there are two separate stories in this book, one resonating closer with me and my own lived experiences and those of other people around me as a migrant. The narrative of this book is as raw, as any book tackling these topics should be, and although the characters sometimes feel flat, they take us through this story and their inner turmoils beautifully.

I do think that the first half of the book, following Graciela and Consuelo is a lot stronger than the second half, El Salvador at the turn of the 20th century is a stronger setting to me than France and the United States later on. Once again, for a story that explores societal and cultural issues through a very character centered narrative, the characters often fall flat and their interpersonal conflicts often go unresolved in a way that could enhance the narrative. And at the center of it, part of me gets it as someone who escaped her own country's dictatorship due to political persecution; sometimes you will not get resolutions, goodbyes and confrontations that should have happened otherwise, sometimes we just leave with the bitter taste that it will just be an abrupt ending to years of fear and ruin; however this ties up to how i sense the second part of the novel, following the genocide and into their immigration stories; this part is full of characters that just never fully develop, and just are there because someone needs to move the narrative forward.

I loved the narrators of this book, and to me they add a lot of the flavor and strength to this book.

I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't get into it. Unfortunately, I did not finish it.

The history of El Salvador has been riddled with revolution, corruption, dictatorship, terror, and genocide. One group that has ceaselessly fallen victim to these scourges has been indigenous women and children. Using magical realism, history, culture, fantasy, and folklore the author constructs a lush tale of the bonds between two sisters cast from this world but always a part of it. Many Spanish words and phrases both enhanced the book but rendered this reader stopping the narrative to parse out the meaning. A Greek chorus of comadres at the beginning was both confusing, funny, and poignant. But then I became lost and confused in the story. Still saw a lot of promise in this author and would try a future book by her. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this title.