The skeletal chapters from Petrona’s perspective provide some belated explanations for the danger she exposed the family to. Chula’s fixation on the news allows smooth introduction of the historical events surrounding Colombia’s instability and Escobar’s eventual death. The family temporarily flees to Alma’s home village to escape Bogotá’s escalating violence, while Chula and Petrona get drawn into a situation that will eventually pose a dire threat. Chula’s formidable mother, Alma, grew up in a slum and copes with standoffish and judgmental well-heeled neighbors while her husband works in the oil fields. Petrona comes from a nearby shanty town and fascinates the implausibly precocious Chula, whose greatest excitements are spying on the richest lady in their neighborhood and hunting ghosts. Seven-year-old Chula’s sheltered life in a gated community with her mother and older sister Cassandra cracks open with the arrival of 13-year-old maid Petrona. Rojas Contreras packs her coming-of-age debut full of details about life in early 1990s Colombia during the last year of Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror.
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