BOOKS
By Barbara de la cuesta
Adam's Chair and Other Waltham Stories: A Novel in Verse
a narrative of one day in 1981 in Waltham Massachusetts. The shuttle, Columbia, orbits above.
An elderly French Canadian escapes his sleeping wife and makes his way to Mt. Feake Cemetery before dawn, whose neighborhoods reflect the city’s own, its waves of immigration. Priscilla, a home health aide, college dropout, and socialist since she turned sixteen, rides her bicycle to work at dawn. She gives baths, gives an English lesson, and reflects on the city whose founders included her ancestors, on her divorce, a hickey on her daughter’s neck… The mayor visits The Sunshine Club. The shuttle sends down messages…
The Spanish Teacher
Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award
De la Cuesta’s novel maintains an accumulating power which holds onto a reader’s attention not only through the forceful figure of Ordóñez, but by demonstrating acutely how ordinary lives are impacted by the underlying social and political landscape. Compelling reading.
-Tom Tolnay, Publisher
Carl, Willi, and Blanche
Praise for Barbara de la Cuesta’s previous novel, The Spanish Teacher, winner of the Gival Press Novel.
On the River This Morning: An English Major Reads the Bible
Is the Bible the Revelation of God’s Word or a work of literature? A lover of literature ponders this question in a lay study group.
Rosa (The Driftless Unsolicited Novella Series Book 4)
“There were little sins and big sins, and if you committed too many little sins you were more likely to go on to the big ones. Some sins you did in your mind and then, sometimes, you went on to let yourself fall into them.”
The Mists
Barbara de la Cuesta’s novella, The Mists, is a fascinating read. The characters are pulled into the midst of conflict and self awareness in the misty mountains of Central America. The reader is whole-heartedly pulled into the minds and hearts of de la Cuesta’s characters.
–Leah Huete de Maines
Henrietta Rose
Henrietta Rose is a woman felled by drink for most of her life, and now sober if slowed by some delayed effects of her habit. She is a naïve painter, a raconteur, and sought-after speaker at AA meetings, and a good Samaritan to some colorful young drunks. Once she was a rich and famous hostess in exotic capitals and mother of three children, whom she has lost here and there. Her losses haunt her, but sobriety tickles her too; she screws up her courage to give a series of dinner parties to reacquaint herself with her brother and grandson, and gives one last grand party for them and all her new friends.
My Name is Henrietta Rose
Once a famous hostess in foreign capitals, Henrietta Rose, felled by drink loses family and health and ends up in a HUD subsidized apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts. Despite her losses she is presently giddily sober in the basements of AA and sets about a series of dinner parties to recover her lost family. Henrietta Rose is part of a trio of novels set in the city of Waltham, of which the Manhattan Review writes: “… an intriguing and surprising novel that shakes up any conceived notion of what a contemporary work should be.
The Gold Mine (Discoveries)
A quixotic South American social reformer and the aimless North American schoolteacher who falls in love with him are caught in a dangerous web of deceit and revenge when they are drawn to the Andes by the promise of great wealth.