No reader will come away hungry from the five-course meal of Francisco Goldman's inventive third novel, The Divine Husband. Set in Central America and New York in the late 19th Century, this is the story of Maria de las Nieves Moran, a clever, strong-willed girl of mixed heritage--half Irish-American, half Mayan Indian. In childhood, she and her closest friend, Paquita, discovered the pleasures of making themselves sneeze with fibers of wool extracted from their clothing. When Paquita, at age 12, began to return the attentions of a rapacious Liberal reformer nicknamed El Anticristo, Maria de las Nieves made Paquita swear not to surrender her virginity before she did. Immediately, the scheming Maria de las Nieves announced her vocation, and joined a convent. Goldman's concentrated prose is leavened with eccentric, often brilliant metaphors (the spread of a rumor is described as "a hemispheric cloud of pigeons looking for statues to land on"), calling to mind the great magical realist writers--Grass, Kundera, Garcia Marquez--and ensuring that not a word is wasted on flat exposition. --Regina Marler



With his previous novels, Francisco Goldman has reaped immense acclaim and established himself as an American voice of vital importance. His third novel is a marvelous tale of great love, the soul of the Americas and the birth of the modern spirit, set in the convents, ballrooms, and coffee plantations of late-nineteenth-century Central America and the docks, rooming houses, and stately Fifth Avenue addresses of New York. When we meet María de las Nieves Moran, she is a bookish and dreamy novice nun-until the country's new ruler closes the convents. What will be her fate in the secular world? When María de las Nieves enrolls in a writing class under José Martí, her life is transformed by the brilliant poet and hero of Cuban independence, whose year in that Central American capital results in Latin America's most famous love poem. María de las Nieves's story unfolds among an unforgettable cast of characters striving for love or success. And when María de las Nieves departs for New York years later, young daughter in tow, she continues to evade the mystery of who, of her many suitors, is the girl's father, and what really happened between her and José Martí.