The Lacuna

Description

The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man torn beween the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America. Born in the U.S. and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, he is an inadvertent witness to their revolutionary talk. Years later, Shepherd has become an international star - a novelist. His fame brings the unwanted attentions of the American authorities and Shepherd's attempts at anonymity are futile as he is drawn into a conflict of historic proportions. A gripping story of identity, loyalty and the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people. The Lacuna is as deep and rich as the New World.

Barbara Kingsolver is one of the most important voices of our time. Barbara Kingsolver's previous fourteen works of fiction and non-fiction have been translated into dozens of languages and earned a devoted readership. She won the Orange Prize in 2010 for The Lacuna and her novel Flight Behaviour was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. In 2000 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, her country's highest honour for service through the arts. Before she made her living as a writer, Kingsolver earned degrees in biology and worked as a scientist. She now lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.