Introduction

"Clearman paints a vivid picture of the gritty and graceful sights of Guatemala as well as of the human heart, while touching upon the universal instinct to protect our children from real and imagined threats."--Holly MacArthur, managing editor of Tin House

Catherine Barnes—shocked to discover her marriage isn't what she thought it was—travels to Guatemala for some soul searching. She takes along her rebellious fourteen-year-old son Isaac, intending to leave him with his tough-love aunt, while she paints pictures for a children's book. In the remote mountain village of Todos Santos she falls under the spell of a rugged landscape and its welcoming, tenacious Mayan inhabitants. Just as she starts to feel at home in earthy kitchens where women pat out tortillas and tell her the stories of their lives, she discovers that Isaac is missing. Kidnappers are on their way to collect ransom from her in Todos Santos. Mother and son confront rumors of foreign baby-snatchers and devil-worshippers, and threats of unexpected violence, as they search for each other. In finding Isaac, Catherine discovers that she must also find herself. Drawing on a deep knowledge of and empathy for Guatemala, and compellingly written, Todos Santos is ultimately a story of love, motherhood, and the hard choices we make.

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Excerpt

The engines cut, and two hundred tons of metal and plastic and human flesh began the long glide back to earth. Most passengers that afternoon, busy balancing their dinner trash on overcrowded trays, fidgeting with headsets or snapping their lolling heads away from strangers as they drowsed, never noticed the start of the descent. Catherine Barnes, sandwiched in a middle seat, did. She hated to leave the sky. Up here, untethered, free from the gravity of husbands and sons, she stared out the window and saw pure patterns of light, shifting and changing.

"Have you been to Guatemala before?" The clean-cut young man in the window seat broke into Catherine's thoughts. She'd been imagining how she would mix the colors packed in her paint box in the overhead bin—cerulean blue, flake white, ivory black, a touch of sienna—colors for the clouds and sky. Annoyed that he had, after all these hours, intruded through the comfortable privacy that divided them, she answered that she had been to Guatemala several times, but always before on vacation. And then, because she couldn't help herself, because the compulsion to be polite drove her to it, she asked the fresh-faced youth where he was headed.

"We have a mission on the coast. I'm taking the bus there tomorrow."

A missionary. She might have guessed from his white shirt and tie. "Oh, the coast," she said. "It's nasty in the lowlands. Hot. Unbelievably humid."

"So I've been told. A difficult place, full of disease and poverty. I figure we can really make a difference there, amongst indigenous people struggling for their daily bread."

Make that tortilla, Catherine wanted to snap. The missionary leaned toward her to speak.

"They have so little. They need God's love."

She managed a thin smile. "I'll keep that in mind when I get to Todos Santos." The name of the town meant All Saints, but she doubted that its citizens prayed to Mary, Peter, John, and Paul, the pale-faced holy ones of their Spanish conquerors. Surely they would favor older, darker gods. Just the missionary's presence irked her, his simple certitudes, the arrogance of those professing to know right from wrong. Better by far to listen to the silence emanating from her son, Isaac, fourteen, recently flunked out of eighth grade, asleep in the aisle seat.

Isaac shifted. Catherine glanced at her son's loose gold hairs straying over his collar, the blond eyelashes against flushed cheeks, so vulnerable in sleep, so precious. Too bad the messy ponytail made him look like the kind of kid gringos are famous for, spoiled and poorly groomed.

Outside the plane window the light show continued. Billowing thunderheads framed the setting sun. The missionary talked on with unstoppable enthusiasm. "I can't wait to see Guatemala City in the sunset."

"You won't," Catherine said, with secret satisfaction. "In Guatemala it's dark by six-thirty, year round. Welcome to the tropics."

A half hour later, when the landing gear finally bumped the tarmac, she was happy to leave the righteous young man behind. She roused Isaac and stretched from the multi-legged flight, ready to be back on earth.

Guatemala City no longer greeted arrivals with mariachi bands and machine guns, the way it had on Catherine's first visit years ago, but it still had the capacity to unnerve. They entered the terminal, shuffled through Migracion, two of a handful of foreigners surrounded by dozens of natives returning to their homeland. Past Customs, she looked up at the visitors' gallery, searching for her sister-in-law. A teeming mass of short, black-haired people—decked out in everything from designer jeans and platform shoes to colorful indigenous costumes—peered down, waving, whistling, signaling to arriving passengers. Whole families, entire villages, about to be reunited it seemed, and overjoyed at the prospect. Catherine felt a pang of envy. Where was Zelda? She checked over her shoulder for Isaac, as though he might have disappeared in the turmoil at the baggage carousel. His silence made him difficult to track. "Are you okay with those bags?" she asked.

He carried a large duffle in each hand, so that she could handle her cumbersome French easel, the wooden paint box with legs that folded up for portability. Isaac grunted assent. They passed gleaming counters proclaiming hotel and tourist services, currency exchange and tours, all oddly unmanned in the empty room, as though Guatemala had planned on a thriving portal welcoming thousands at a time and the guests had never showed. Instead, the planes dribbled in, one flight at a time. Glass doors disgorged the arriving passengers into the mob, kept outside. People shoved through the human wall, porters shouted, horns honked. Finally she spotted Zelda, tall among the Guatemaltecos, her red hair, wild and kinky, streaming to her waist, a welcome sight. Catherine waved, and then used her French easel to carve a way through the crowd. Isaac followed with the duffles. Zelda, her large body swathed in native cloth, hugged Catherine and got banged in the knee by the paint box.

"Shit, Catherine! What have you got in there?" Without waiting for an answer, she put her arm around Isaac's shoulder and pulled him toward her in a forced embrace. "How are you, kid?"

When he remained silent, Zelda coached. "Say hi, Isaac."

"Hi, Aunt Zelda."

Zelda led the way around puddles in the street, turned iridescent by streetlights in the early night. The air was fresh from the recent rain, sharp from the altitude of five thousand feet, smoky from cooking fires and exhaust from cars and trucks and buses that had never seen emission controls, and tingling with mythology, with a past more exotic than covered wagons and Plymouth Rock. Catherine breathed it in, freed from the atmosphere she'd left behind in Iowa.

She was glad it wasn't raining when they reached Zelda's pickup truck.

"You have to ride in the back with the luggage, Isaac," Zelda said. Without a word, Isaac sprang into the back of the pickup. He arranged the duffle bags and settled himself among them, as if they made a cozy banquette.

"See?" Zelda said, "Kids love riding in the back."

Catherine climbed in front and searched, sticking a hand into the crack between the seat and the back.

"Don't bother looking," Zelda said. "There aren't any seat belts."

Catherine could see Isaac through the back window of the cab. "What if it rains?"

"He'll get wet." This was the woman to whom she planned to entrust her fourteen-year-old nihilist son, counting on her to set limits, read him the riot act, and guard him from danger while she went on her research trip. "He'll be fine," Zelda said.

Zelda negotiated the pickup through the freshly washed but still dirty streets of the capital, neon lights screaming from businesses along the strip: Car Wash La Cabaña, Campero Pollo to Go, Pizza Hut—Llámanos! The mangling of cultures exhilarated Catherine. That she could speak another language felt miraculous to her, like walking through a wall, taking her behind the looking glass. They swerved and screeched through lanes of traffic. Stopped at a light, Zelda shouted "Jesus fucking Christ!," threw open her door, and leapt from the cab.

Through the back window Catherine saw Isaac pulling on one handle of a duffle. Grasping the other with two hands was a wiry man in rags. Horrified, Catherine stared at the strange man, his face contorted in struggle, his mouth gaping in a snarl, like a wild snaggletoothed dog, threatening her son. She heard Zelda's voice shrieking "Policía! Socorro! Vaya-cabrón-chíngate-hijo-de-puta!," saw Zelda appear over the back of the pickup, and realized finally that the tug-of-war was a robbery attempt.

Catherine yanked open her door. Her feet hit the pavement. She saw the ragged man dive from the truckbed, dart through the line of stopped cars, and disappear into an alley. Shaking, she climbed into the back, pulled Isaac into her arms, and started to sob. He hugged her back with unusual warmth. "Relax, Mom. He wasn't even armed. He never stood a chance against Aunt Z's charging rhino act."

Catherine felt the beginning of a laugh even as she cried. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. The novel’s title means “All Saints.” Catherine wonders on p. 2 if the town’s inhabitants pray to Christian saints or to “older, darker gods.” Do they? What roles do religion, shamanism, and superstition play in the lives of the Guatemalans in the book? What are Catherine’s and Isaac’s attitudes toward the beliefs they encounter, and how do those attitudes change?

2. The novel begins with Catherine and Isaac arriving in Guatemala, a place where they are outsiders. What is the role of setting in the novel? Do you think Catherine and Isaac would have made different choices if they had stayed home in Iowa that summer? Nicolasa tells Catherine she wants to leave Guatemala; Catherine urges her to stay. Why? What do you think people who are born into poor and violent countries should do to improve their lives?

3. The story is told largely through two points of view—Catherine’s and Isaac’s. How does this structure serve the novel? How does Isaac see the world differently than his mother? When Catherine finds out that Isaac has been kidnapped, she accuses herself of being a bad mother. Is she? Is Zelda a poor choice of guardian?

4. Isaac blames himself for Bernie’s accident. Was it his fault? How does he redeem himself? Should Catherine have been angry at him when she finds out he helped engineer his own kidnapping?

5. Discuss how the theme of good vs. evil repeats throughout the book. Baudilio stirs up the populace and attacks Catherine. Is he evil? Are the people who attack the Japanese tourists? Is the society that jails the young mother because she inadvertently started the riot? Is Carlos really a kidnapper? Or just an opportunist who was sincere in his desire to help Isaac?

6. How is nature used as a metaphor? What effects do the high altitude of Todos Santos and the sea level heat of Lívingston have on the characters? Guatemala calls itself “the land of eternal springtime.” Would you agree?

7. What effect does Catherine’s affair with Oswaldo have on her marriage? Compare Catherine’s relationship with Oswaldo to what you know of her relationship with Elliot. Did she make the right decision in the end of the novel? What do you think the future holds for these characters? Will Catherine end up with Oswaldo?

8. On p. 39, Rolfe tells Catherine that everyone there believes in the power of the pulsera, and that if she stays long enough, she will, too. Do all the characters believe in superstitions? Does Nicolasa? Does Oswaldo? Why does Isaac ask the shaman if he’ll ever get home? How could Don Jerónimo have known about Bernie’s accident? Did Catherine really meet the Llorona?

9. Catherine is an artist, which means she is an observer. How does this shape her character? Is she a passive observer? How does her character change through her experiences in Todos Santos?

10. Even though Zelda is Elliot’s sister, she seems to be encouraging Catherine to break free of him. Why would she do that? Is she being disloyal to her brother?

11. What are the effects of history and racism on contemporary Guatemalans? What has the relationship been between the Spanish conquerors and the Mayans? Does it seem to be changing? What were the aftereffects of the civil war that reached its height of violence in the 1980s? At the funeral for the victims of the lynching, Catherine sees the villagers mourning “together, in a collective, as they had attacked the day before.” In what ways is the culture she finds in Todos Santos different from American culture? In what ways the same? What relevance does Guatemala have for Americans?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Author Deborah Clearman's web site

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