THE WAY OF THE SAINTS

Three generations of a Puerto Rican family deal with spiritual and interpersonal conflict in Engelman’s debut novel.

This sprawling story moves back and forth in time with various sections set in the 1920s, when a young boy in Puerto Rico named Rosendo is sold to a santera (a female Santeria priest) to participate in her rituals; the ’50s, as the Puerto Rican nationalist movement launches a doomed fight for independence; and the ’70s and, later, the ’80s, when Rosendo’s granddaughter, Esther, deals with the fallout of her parents’ dysfunctional marriage as her mother, Isabel, searches for answers through her own Santeria practice. Rosendo eventually frees himself from the santera’s abuse and ends up working as a day laborer who has little sympathy for his half brother Alberto’s enthusiasm for the independence movement. After Alberto goes missing, Rosendo rapes Alberto’s girlfriend, Paula; when she becomes pregnant, she and Rosendo are forced into marriage and move together to San Juan. A decade later, Alberto returns, and after getting the reluctant Paula and Rosendo involved in the periphery of the nationalist uprising, he convinces them to move to New York for a fresh start. Their story is interwoven with Isabel's increasing involvement in Santeria and Esther’s struggle to make sense of the unbalanced adults in her life. The book is steeped in Puerto Rican history and culture, and Engelman's vivid prose (“a clandestine, secret community, a family that transformed their jewel-box living rooms into festive drum circles”) brings the many descriptions of Santeria rituals to life. (The mishandling of Spanish last names is the only jarring note in an otherwise authentic cultural portrayal.) The story is bleak, with abuse and dysfunction passed down from one generation to the next, and although Esther and Isabel eventually land on a version of happiness, it is hard won. The book does an excellent job of capturing the essence of a community facing challenges from external and internal forces, and it delivers an intimate, emotionally resonant portrait of a complicated family.

An intense exploration of a complicated family.