The Queen of Swords

Cross-Stitch author Barrera blends memoir and biography to deliver a unique portrait of Mexican author Elena Garro (1916–1988), who helped pioneer magical realism. Garro married poet Octavio Paz when she was 20, giving up her early vocation in acting and dance to support her husband’s career. Their marriage was tumultuous; Garro claimed that Paz encouraged her suicide after their divorce, stole her poetry, and passed it off as his own. Garro started writing for magazines in 1941, eventually turning to novels (Recollections of Things to Come), plays (Socrates and the Cats), screenplays (The Story of a Great Love), and poetry. She regularly employed the supernatural in her writing; according to Barrera, “magic was a device she used in her books when she couldn’t find any other way to get out of a jam.” Her work was revolutionary for denouncing violence against women, and in the 1960s she became politically active in support of a pro-democracy platform. After receiving death threats, she fled to the U.S. in 1972, before returning to Mexico in the ’90s to spend her final years surrounded by her 13 cats. Barrera supports her archival research with personal reflections, admitting, “I’ve fallen in love with [Garro],” along with an interpretation of Garro’s birth chart and a tarot reading. This subjective approach successfully captures the complicated personality of an undersung author while also demonstrating the limits of true knowability. Readers will be mesmerized. (Nov.)