In the Midst of Winter

“She mistrusted happiness on principle; she found it rather kitschy.” 

After enduring the heartbreak of her divorce with her husband whom she had loved deeply for many decades, Lucia becomes skeptical about happiness. While she indulged in passions before, happiness in her later life feels excessive after her many struggles.

“Afraid of falling into the trap of romanticism, which he had avoided for twenty-five years, he never asked himself why he rejected love, because the answer seemed obvious: it was his inescapable penance.” 

After losing his wife, Anita and his child, Bibi, Richard blames himself for these losses. Anita and Bibi were part of his life during a time of great passions and adventure. Richard believes that his negligence during this era is the cause of Anita and Bibi’s deaths. Richard’s persisting sense of loss and guilt prevents him from pursuing genuine love and romance after Anita and Bibi.

“According to Father Benito, the emigrants sent back billions of dollars each year to maintain their families, and in so doing ended up contributing to the stability of the government and the indifference of the rich. Few of the village children finished school: the boys left to look for work or ended up in gangs or on drugs, while the girls got pregnant, moved away for work, or were recruited as prostitutes. The school had very few resources and were it not for the evangelical missionaries who competed unfairly with Father Benito thanks to funds from abroad, it would not even have had workbooks or pencils.” 

Father Benito, the priest who assisted Evelyn’s family and many others in the town of Monja Blanca del Valle, discusses the socio-economic reasons behind the growing migration from Guatemala to the U.S.. Due to limited opportunities in Guatemala, many poor Guatemalans rely on the church for resources as the state cannot fully provide and are destined for risky life paths. Money sent back to families in Guatemala from Guatemalan emigrants in the U.S. has become a normalized way of earning income in a country that is economically struggling.

“The grandmother was tired of hearing Andres’s plan, but Evelyn delighted in every last detail, even though she didn’t want a life elsewhere. Her village and her grandmother’s shack were the only world she knew.” 

Evelyn’s brother Andre is determined to join their mother in the U.S. so that they will not fall victim to gang violence as their brother Gregorio has. While Evelyn does not share his desire to leave, the ensuing violence that leaves Andre dead and Evelyn susceptible to further harm makes her departure inevitable. 

“Tell your superego to fuck off, man. The way you examine every single action, past and present, is twisted. The sin of pride. You’re not that important. You have to forgive yourself once and for all, just like Anita and Bibi have forgiven you.” 

Richard’s inability to move from his past wrongs against Anita and Bibi has made him an extremely cautious and haunted person. His best friend Horacio tells him that he cannot keep punishing himself for his alcoholism, his inability to save Anita from her mental suffering, and Bibi’s death. Horacio informs Richard that his obsession with the past is prideful and that forgiving oneself is not only necessary but humbling. 

“This violence is the result of an endless war against the poor. Two hundred thousand indigenous people massacred, fifty thousand disappeared, a million and a half displaced. Guatemala is a small country; just calculate what percentage of the population that means.” 

Father Benito, in a conversation with a doctor following the attack on Evelyn and Andre, expresses his anger at the increasing violence in Guatemala. He identifies it as an economic issue as the poor are the ones who suffer most, particularly the indigenous population. This devasting reality is a major reason behind the inevitability of Evelyn’s departure from Guatemala. If she were to stay, she would be further victimized. 

“The lack of a father leaves a hole in a woman’s heart, Lucia. A girl needs to feel she is protected; she needs masculine energy to develop trust in men and later to be able to give herself in love.” 

As Lucia’s mother feels betrayed by her husband, Lucia grows up without a father in addition to her mother’s distrust in men. Later in life, Lucia’s mother warns Lucia that her struggles with men may descend from her lack of a stable father figure. While Lucia disagrees with this view, she does exhibit a pattern of seeking unreliable male romantic partners in her life.

“But see how life refuses to leave us in peace? Sooner or later it catches up with us.” 

While Richard initially refuses to help Evelyn once it is revealed that there is a dead body in the trunk of her employer’s car, Lucia argues that they must help because these circumstances are inevitable. She speaks from her experience with violence and loss, though her words will eventually resonate with a guilt-ridden Richard too.

“Richard caved in so quickly that later on he was amazed at his own inconsistency. Reflecting on it, he concluded he had spent years fearful of any change that might threaten his security, and yet perhaps it was not fear but anticipation: maybe he harbored a secret desire for divine intervention to descend and disrupt his perfect, monotonous existence.”

Richard has lived cautiously since Anita and Bibi’s deaths, believing that indulgent behavior such as his alcoholism is responsible for their demise. While his cautious behavior extends to his initial refusal to help Evelyn, Lucia’s influence helps him accept that he has to take action in his life. Despite the grimness of Evelyn’s circumstance, he feels it presents a chance for him to claim more agency in his life and heal himself.

“‘What do you gain by thinking about the future? Things follow their course and you can’t control anything, so relax, brother,’ was the advice he had heard a hundred times from his friend. Horacio accused Richard of spending his life talking to himself, muttering, remembering, repenting, planning. He said that only human beings were so focused on themselves, slaves to their egos, navel-gazing, on the defensive even though no danger threatened them.” 

Horacio believes Richard’s overly cautious behavior curbs his ability to truly live his life. When Richard is not lamenting his past, he is worrying about his future. Once again, Horacio criticizes Richard’s attempts to control areas of his life that have their own natural course. Horacio feels it is arrogant for Richard to believe that one can manage the unmanageable in life.

“He felt sheltered and safe in this sad motel, linked to the two women in their adventure, feeling his way toward friendship and moved at finding himself so close to Lucia. He was so unfamiliar with this peaceful sense of happiness he did not even recognize it.”

Despite the harrowing circumstances of assisting Evelyn with the dead body, the journey upstate has forced Richard out of his cautious habits. He finds that he is ironically able to feel safety and intimacy with Lucia and Evelyn in this time of emergency, which he has not felt in a long time.

“There was little sympathy for those who came back: people on the left accused them of being cowards for leaving; those on the right saw them as communists.” 

Lucia’s return to Chile is difficult. While she had left Chile to avoid political persecution, she struggles initially upon her return to be accepted by the country that she left. There is judgment from her own people too who see the circumstances of her departure as a personal or political betrayal.

“She realized she was a foreigner in her own land, disconnected from the network of social relationships without which almost nothing was possible, lost in what remained of a past that did not fit into the bustling present-day Chile. She did not understand the keys or codes: even the sense of humor had changed, and the language was peppered with euphemisms and caution, because there was still the aftertaste of the censorship of the tough times.” 

In addition to reconciling the political circumstances of her departure and return to Chile, Lucia also has to grapple with the changing social life of the country of her birth. She left Chile during the time of rising dictatorship. Upon her return to Chile, she can still feel the reverberations of social control from this dictatorship despite the changed political circumstances of the country. It has altered the culture of the country, which makes Chile feel ironically foreign to Lucia.

“Lena dubbed her daughter’s tendency to adorn the object of her infatuation with imagined virtues her ‘Christmas tree syndrome’: Lucia chose an ordinary fir tree and decorated it with baubles and tinsel that over time fell off until all that remained was the skeleton of a dried-out tree.”

Lucia’s mother accuses Lucia of possessing ‘Christmas tree syndrome,’ which is the tendency to idealize her male romantic partners. Rather than seeing them for what they are, Lucia has a habit of imbuing greater virtues to them than they realistically possess. This means that she is ultimately disappointed by them in the end. This crushed set of expectations mirrors many immigrant experiences in the United States.

“They were going to get rid of the car and of Kathryn Brown; they were going to say goodbye to Evelyn Ortega, and after that Lucia would return to being simply the Chilean woman in the basement. But he didn’t want that moment to arrive. He wanted all the clocks to stop so that they would never have to part.” 

Having repressed his passions and more extreme emotions for so long, Richard is surprised to find himself growing intimately attached to his new companions, Lucia and Evelyn. Brought together by the unfortunate demise of Kathryn Brown, Richard has known a sense of closeness through deep sharing and listening to Lucia and Evelyn’s stories that he is not aware that he has been craving for some while. Through the sharing of their stories, Richard is finally able to talk about the loss he experienced as well, which is freeing for him.

“Thanks to the stick she guessed it was midday, and that was when the first hallucinations began. They had the shapes and colors of the time she had been given the ayahuasca potion: armadillos, rats, jaguar cubs without their mother, Andres’s black dog that had died years earlier but now came to visit her in perfect health.” 

During Evelyn’s attempt to cross the border to the U.S., she hallucinates the same vision that she receives while under the influence of the special medicinal tea given to her by Felicita. The hallucination consists of animals such as the jaguar, which represents divine feminine power. This animal is to protect Evelyn on her journey. Additionally, the vision of Andres’s dog is a positive sign of renewal for Evelyn as it suggests that she too will find new life.

“I’d like to see an American of whatever color work for the little they pay us.”

In explaining the rising antagonism towards Latino migrants in the U.S. to Evelyn, Evelyn’s mother challenges the stereotype that migrants are taking jobs away from U.S. citizens. She expresses that migrant wages are often so shockingly low that U.S. citizens would refuse the work anyway.

“This girl is a refugee. No one is illegal in this life, we all have the right to live in this world. Money and crime do not respect borders. I ask you, sir, why we human beings should do so?” 

When Evelyn is questioned by an immigration official, Galileo stands up to the officer on Evelyn’s behalf. The officer then names Evelyn a refugee who left Guatemala to avoid gang violence and death. Still, U.S. border politics seem more concerned with punishing undocumented people than addressing more pressing illegal activities, which prompts him to express that it seems unfair that a young girl should be considered a criminal for trying to save her own life.

“In her mother’s last days, Lucia understood that death was not an end, was not the absence of life, but a powerful oceanic wave of clear, luminous water that was carrying her off to another dimension.” 

In contrast to the many devastating deaths that appear throughout the novel, Lucia’s mother’s passing is peaceful because she is able to reencounter her lost son Enrique in the afterlife. It is a way of communicating with the dead to find closure with the political circumstances leading to her son’s disappearance. 

“If we go on with this, Kathryn Brown will be a disappeared person, just like my brother. There will be people who love her and will look for her all the time. The suffering caused by that uncertainty is worse than the certainty of her death.” 

While Lucia, Richard, and Evelyn originally had intended on sinking Kathryn Brown’s body in the lake along with the car to remove the evidence, Lucia realizes that this will cause a lot of suffering for the people in Kathryn’s life. Lucia recalls how much her mother suffered from Enrique’s disappearance, not knowing if he was alive or dead. She does not want to reproduce this uncertainty for Kathryn’s kin. She proposes a more humane way to pay respect to Kathryn’s passing, illustrating that people can rise above their pasts.

“They make them work like animals. They don’t pay them, they threaten and kill them. Lots of people are involved in it, Evelyn: agents, trucking companies, police, border guards, and even corrupt judges. There’s never any shortage of clients. There’s a lot of money in it, if you understand me?” 

Mrs. Leroy reveals to Evelyn the truth behind her husband’s business, which is human trafficking and enslavement. When she mentions the many officials involved, which includes members of the law and border guards, Evelyn does not mention her familiarity with immigration officials. When she crossed the border into the U.S., she was highly aware of the possibility that she could be sold into human trafficking. Mrs. Leroy’s warnings about her husband’s work makes him the chief antagonist of Evelyn’s story as well.

“He was ashamed of having always protected himself from disenchantment, from being abandoned or betrayed; frightened of suffering the way he had made Anita suffer; terrified of life itself; cut off from the formidable adventure of love.” 

During the journey to bury Kathryn Brown, Richard revises his careful stance on life. He realizes he has been blaming himself for Anita’s suffering, even after her passing. He has not allowed himself to love another person as fiercely as he loved her until he met Lucia. Driven together by the harrowing stance of burying a dead body, Richard is forced to engage with the passions in his heart that he has repressed for so long.

“The only cure for so much misfortune is love. It’s not the force of gravity that keeps the universe in balance, but the binding power of love.” 

When Richard expresses his gratitude towards Lucia for allowing him to heal from his past, Lucia expresses that the only way to move forward from the past is to be open to the possibility of love. Their new romance presents an opportunity for both Richard and Lucia to heal. With all the misfortune they have faced individually and together, they can work towards a more hopeful future by loving each other.