We Are Green and Trembling

The beautiful latest from Slum Virgin author Cabezón Cámara is based on the real yet extraordinary life of Antonio de Erauso (1592–1650), who was raised as a girl in a Basque convent before escaping out of a desire to see the world. After Antonio sails to South America as a cabin boy, he becomes secretary to a repellent Conquistador captain. He then discovers two Guaraní girls held captive by the captain’s friend, a prelate with a “piranha-smile,” and frees them. From the jungle where Antonio has taken the girls, he writes letters to his aunt, a prioress back in Donostia, in which he alluringly recounts his adventures. The author alternates Antonio’s missives with sensuous and searing bird’s-eye depictions—literally, from a buzzard’s perspective—of the jungle and the wanton devastation taking place there. At one point, a pyre of Indigenous people’s corpses is described as a “pink waxy lagoon of white skeletons.” Antonio, in turn, seeks redemption amid the carnage, and eventually finds it in the beauty of the natural world, which offers meaning to him and the girls he’s saved. Readers will be riveted by this queer anticolonial picaresque. Agent: Sandra Pareja, Massie & McQuilkin. (June)