Dark Plums

by Maria Espinosa

Set in the late 1950s, this provocative novel follows Adrianne, a Houston native who has recently arrived in Manhattan and wanders the city having indiscriminate sex with strangers. She soon falls in with Alfredo, a Cuban-American artist who coerces her into prostitution in order to support his lifestyle and who treats her with increasing levels of brutality. Adrianne must ultimately rely on reserves of an inner strength to claw her way out of her desperate circumstances. This gripping exploration of a young woman’s search for love and self in the big city is titillating and psychologically haunting in equal measure.

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

MARIA ESPINOSA is a novelist, poet, and translator as well as a teacher. Her publications include five novels: Incognito: Journey of a Secret Jew, Dark Plums, Longing, which received an American Book Award, as well as Dying Unfinished, which received a Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence from PEN Oakland. Her fifth and most recent novel, Suburban Souls, tells a tale of Jewish German Holocaust survivors in 1970’s San Francisco. She has also published two collections of poems, Love Feelings, and Night Music, and a critically acclaimed translation of George Sand’s novel, Lelia. Espinosa is concerned with human communication on a level that transcends the norms permitted by society. Her novels focus on the subtle as well as the obvious forces that shape a human being.

Reviews

[Sarah Mackowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded to 3. Found this at a used bookstore and it looks like I’m only a handful of people who have read it.