Conquest

Sara Rosario Gonzáles is a restorer of rare books and manuscripts at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. When Sara restores a sixteenth-century manuscript about an Aztec princess enslaved by Cortés and sent to Europe to entertain the pope and Emperor Charles V, she doesn't realize the power of the tale she's about to immerse herself into.

The princess, we find, is determined to avenge the slaughter of her people, and Sara is determined to prove that the book, which caused scandal when first published, was written by the Aztec princess herself, and not the European monk reputed to have penned it.

Entwined within Sara's fascination of the manuscript is Sara's own life: the frustration over her inability to commit to Karl, the man who has loved her since high school; the haunting wisdom of her departed mother; and the stability of a father who sees the world in a way Sara does not, both pragmatically and unyieldingly.

The Conquest is a beautifully written novel that offers both hope that true love does exist and that history, in all its complexity, is what drives us all toward tomorrow.

From Whiting Award winning author, Yxta Maya Murray, comes a stunning novel about a rare book restorer bent on solving the authorship of a 16th century manuscript about an Aztec princess, that blends the mystery of Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas, with a love story not seen since A.S. Byatt's Posession.

This fascinating novel centers around Sara Rosario Gonzales, a restorer of rare books and manuscripts at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. When Sara is assigned to restore a 16th century manuscript about a female Aztec juggler enslaved by Cortes and sent to Europe to entertain the Pope as well as Emperor Charles V, she doesn't realize the power of the tale she's about to immerse herself into.

The juggler, we find, is determined to take revenge on the king of the empire who contributed to the slaughter of her people, and Sara is determined to prove that the book, which caused scandal when it was published, was written by the Aztec juggler herself, and not the European monk reputed to have penned it.

Entwined within Sara's fascination of the manuscript is Sara's own life; the frustration she has over her inability to commit to Karl, the man who has loved her since high school, her cultural displacement as a Latina in L.A., along with straddling the surreal world her departed mother kept alive with the pragmatic thinking of her demanding father.

This is a beautifully written novel which shows that sometimes, a sense of amnesia is the only thing that allows us to forget a painful history.

Publishers Weekly

Moving away from the urban barrio settings of her previous works, Murray (Locas; What It Takes to Get to Vegas) entwines the tales of two Latin American women separated by centuries in her third novel. Sara Gonzales is a rare-book restorer at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. While working on a 16th-century manuscript, she becomes engrossed in its story of an Aztec woman captured by Cort s and sent to Europe to entertain the pope. The narrator of the manuscript, "Helen," describes her encounters with the painter Titian, for whom she served as a muse; her many female lovers, including the adored Caterina, a bluestocking nun; and her ever-burning desire to avenge the deaths of her own people by assassinating Cort s, the pope and Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor. Sara's boss and the scholarly community consider the manuscript to be a work of fiction, but Sara believes otherwise-and endeavors to prove Helen's existence and authorship. Meanwhile, there is the issue of Sara's on-again, off-again relationship with Karl, the man she has loved since high school, who is set to marry another woman because Sara has never been able to fully commit. Sara's life, so claustrophobically focused on her work, stands in effective contrast to Helen's swashbuckling escapades across Mediterranean Europe; Sara's quest for personal satisfaction-as well as her thoughtful musings on history and her own sense of displacement as a Latina-are echoed on a grand scale in Helen's encounters with the Europeans. The subplot about Sara's literary sleuthing ties the two stories neatly together and gives the book a satisfying edge of suspense. (Oct. 4) Forecast: Murray's switch to historical fiction may bewilder her fans, but she acquits herself well and could pick up a few readers looking for the Hispanic version of powerful-women-in-history offerings, like Susan Vreeland's recent novel The Passion of Artemisia. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Yxta Maya Murray is the author of The Conquest—winner of the Whiting Award—and The King's Gold, the second novel in her acclaimed Red Lion series. She is a professor at Loyola Law School and lives in Los Angeles.