Las Madres

The novel alternates between a present-day story set in the summer and fall of 2017 and flashbacks to Puerto Rico in 1975–1976, tracing the interlocking fates of five women across four decades.

In July 2017, Luz Peña Fuentes is a 57-year-old woman living in the Bronx with her adult daughter, Marysol Ríos Peña. Luz has chronic memory loss caused by a traumatic brain injury sustained decades earlier. She works at an adult daycare center, paints portraits on stones, and keeps detailed journals labeled by date, her only reliable record of daily life. When she settled in the United States, the accent mark over the n in Peña was lost, transforming her surname's meaning from "Rock" to "Sorrow." Marysol, a home-care nurse, looks after Luz with the support of a tight circle they call GLAMS: Graciela Gil Templeton; Graciela's mothers, Ada Gil Méndez and Shirley Templeton Vélez, a couple who have served as Luz's guardians since her teens; Luz; and Marysol.

The 1975 timeline opens with 15-year-old Luz living in the Puerto Rican highlands with her parents, Federico Peña Ortiz, a chemist, and Salvadora Fuentes Argoso y Peña, a pharmacologist, both working at a pharmaceutical plant on birth-control drugs. Luz is the most accomplished dancer at her local ballet academy and the only Black student. During a master class by a visiting instructor, Kyryl Kyryl, a former Bolshoi-trained dancer, Luz is singled out for brutal physical criticism and dismissed from the studio while her teacher, Miss Rita, fails to intervene.

That evening, at a party hosted by Luz's godfather, Pastor Josué, a famous anti-drug preacher and former college classmate of her parents, Luz sneaks off with friends to drink and smoke marijuana for the first time. Salvadora catches her and drags her to the car. On the winding mountain road home, Luz leans out the window to vomit. Salvadora scrambles to pull her back in, accidentally knocking the gear shift. Federico loses control, and the car plunges into a ravine, killing both parents. Luz, thrown from the vehicle, survives.

Luz spends four weeks in a coma and emerges with retrograde amnesia and severe short-term memory loss, unable to recall her name, her parents, or any part of her former life. Her maternal grandmother, Concepción, whom Luz calls Güela, is a Franciscan penitent who wears a brown sackcloth habit and visits daily. Luz's paternal grandfather, Alonso Peña Rivera, sells the family home and creates a trust for her care.

After rehabilitation, Luz lives with Güela on her rural farm, where the two bond through nightly conversations. Güela reveals that she had an abortion at 13 after being impregnated by a migrant worker, and that her lifelong habit is penance for this act, not a vow for a healthy baby as the family claimed. She also discloses that Salvadora had an abortion before graduate school, impregnated and then abandoned by Josué. This experience drove Salvadora's dedication to women's reproductive health.

In early 1976, Luz moves to Alonso's home in a gated San Juan neighborhood and meets her tutor, Ada, and Ada's partner, Shirley. Ada becomes Luz's constant companion, connecting her with three neighborhood girls: Ileana, Minaxi, and Perla. Among the broader group is Claudio Worthy Villalobos, nicknamed "El Vikingo" for his pale skin, the privileged son of a wealthy media family. At a May party, Claudio corners Luz, pins her against a wall, and attempts to assault her. Luz fights back, biting his arm and stomping on his back before escaping. Her friends later claim Claudio drunkenly fell into thorny hedges.

In June, the housekeeper Loreta alerts Ada that Luz may be pregnant. Ada finds Claudio raping Luz while Luz is trapped inside an achaque, one of the dissociative episodes caused by her brain injury. Alonso, Ada, Shirley, and Josué decide to move Luz to New York, ostensibly for better medical care but actually to manage Alonso's cancer and Luz's pregnancy far from scandal.

The 2017 timeline reveals the consequences across decades. Alonso dies of cancer six months after they reach the Bronx, naming Ada and Shirley as Luz's guardians. Luz regresses severely and takes years to recover. She eventually marries Danilo Ríos, and they have Marysol. In 1987, when Marysol is five, robbers shoot and kill Danilo in their bodega and wound Luz. Marysol witnesses the murder but is terrorized into silence by Nacho, a neighbor she recognizes as one of the gunmen, and carries this secret for 30 years. Luz relapses, losing all memory of her family. Ada takes Marysol to Maine while Luz recovers, and Josué pays off Danilo's family to prevent their custody claims. In 1994, a fire destroys Luz and Marysol's apartment, consuming all of Luz's journals, photographs, and documents.

Graciela, raised by Ada and Shirley in Maine, has always been told she is the product of Ada's one-night stand in the summer of 1976. Now 40 and working as a tech consultant fascinated by ancestry research, she hopes DNA testing might reveal her unknown father.

In September 2017, the five women travel to Puerto Rico for Shirley's 70th birthday. They settle into a rental house in the San Juan neighborhood where Ada, Shirley, and Luz lived in the 1970s. Marysol steps into Puerto Rican waters for the first time, and Luz tells her, "Bienvenida a tu patria." Graciela presents DNA test kits as birthday gifts, but Ada, Shirley, and Luz refuse to participate.

Hurricane María, a Category 5 storm, makes landfall on September 20. The women huddle together through the night as the house shakes and the ground floor floods. The narrative expands to depict devastation across the island: homes slide into ravines, the cemetery in Luz's hometown gives up her parents' coffins, and among the dead are Perla and Claudio.

In the aftermath, Marysol serves as a community nurse while Luz regresses further, speaking almost entirely in French and German. A television crew arrives, and Marysol delivers an impassioned statement reminding viewers that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. During a medical visit to a partially destroyed home, Graciela meets Minaxi, now an aging socialite who recognizes Graciela's resemblance to the Worthy family. Minaxi reveals everything: Claudio is Graciela's father, Luz is her biological mother, and Ada found Claudio raping Luz during a dissociative episode. The teenagers, Minaxi admits, thought it was funny that Luz could never remember what happened.

Shattered, Graciela confronts Ada and Shirley, who confirm the truth: They fabricated the one-night-stand story, placed Ada's name on Graciela's birth certificate through connections arranged by Josué, and raised Graciela as their own. When Graciela asks whether Luz knows she is Graciela's mother, they answer: "We don't know." Graciela partially confides in Marysol, revealing that her mothers always knew who her father was, but withholding the truth about Luz.

On the final morning, the group boards their flight alongside Oliver Gil Figueroa, an old friend of Luz's family, and Oliver's wife, Miriam, whose home was destroyed and whose sister and grandson were killed by the flooding. As the plane rises, the passengers look down at the ravaged island, its forests reduced to brown stubble and gray skeletons. Luz begins softly singing "Lamento Borincano," a traditional Puerto Rican song of longing, and one by one the passengers join in, crying and singing for the island they love. Puerto Rico disappears behind them, and they are suspended in an opaque sky between the devastated homeland and an uncertain future.