The Lacuna - Softcover

Breathtaking...dazzling...The Lacuna can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver s novel lies in its call to conscience and connection. She has mined Shepherd s richly imagined history to create a tableau vivant of epochs and people that time has transformed almost past recognition. Yet it s a tableau vivant whose story line resonates in the present day... Kingsolver gives voice to truths whose teller could express them only in silence. (New York Times Book Review)

Compelling...Kingsolver s descriptions of life in Mexico City burst with sensory detail thick sweet breads, vividly painted walls, the lovely white feet of an unattainable love. (The New Yorker)

[Kingsolver s] playful pastiche brings to vivid life the culture wars of an earlier era... (Vogue)

In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR and J. Edgar Hoover. THE LACUNA is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico from a coastal island jungle to 1930 s Mexico City Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America s hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach the lacuna between truth and public presumption.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist, and of art itself. THE LACUNA is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.