Sisterhood

I'm always a bit nervous when I read a book that is centered around women.  See, while I believe in gender equality and that men and women and everyone in between should be able to do whatever they want to do, I find that there is a lot of writing that is a bit too "in your face" women's power.  In your face to the point where it really seems like the main character, and sometimes even the author, hate men.  I don't want to read that, I'm sorry.  When I found Helen Bryan's The Sisterhood, I was cautiously optimistic.  Amazon's description of this book didn't say anything really about men in general, just that Menina is adopted by a nice couple and that she gets mugged.  The rest of the description sounded pretty good so I thought I'd give it a try.  And man, am I glad I did.  This has become one of my favorite books.

As a young girl, Menina was found after a terrible storm.  She was taken to a local orphanage, and her mystery starts there.  When she was found, all Menina (who was given a different name at the orphanage) was wearing was a religious medal.  Shockingly, it was the religious medal that belonged to the Abbey that ran the orphanage she was taken to.  The medal came to the Abbey--called Las Golondrinas, after all the swallows who come to roost--by way of their mother Abbey in Andalusia, Spain.  The Spanish Abbey, also Las Golondrinas, has a secret, but it's a secret centuries before Menina's time.

Menina is adopted by Virgil and Sarah-Lynn Walker from Laurel Run, Georgia.  The Abbess is glad of this, because Menina's medal once again has the Catholic Church looking closely at Las Golandrinas.  When the new family leaves, the Abbess sends Menina with her medal and the recently relocated Chronicle of the Abbey under the guise of being a way for the future Menina to connect with her past.  It's also to protect the Abbey.

Many years in the future, nineteen-year-old Menina has grown up to be the perfect daughter.  She's polite, helpful, and well-spoken.  She goes to the local all girl's college for a major in Art History, and even gets a scholarship.  One of the conditions of the scholarship is an original research paper.  Menina finds a few paintings by a Spanish painter named Tristan Mendoza that have the same swallow in his signature that is on the medal that she has.  She wants to go to the Prado in Madrid to further study him.  However, she has gotten engaged and her future husband wants a trophy wife rather than an intelligent one.  Menina's Hispanic ancestry will help, her fiance believes, with gaining him minority votes.  When tragedy strikes, Menina gets on a plane to Spain (sorry, no rain on the plains!) and ends up in Andalusia.  In a small town, she gets mugged  and misses her bus to Madrid.  She goes to the police and the local police captain takes her to stay with the nuns at the convent that overlooks the town.  Now the real body of the story begins.

The police captain, Alejandro Fernández Galán, is hopeful that Menina with her art background, can help the nuns, all of whom are elderly, find some paintings that will earn them some money so they can live out their final days in peace.  What Menina finds is a series of paintings by the man she has come to Spain to study, Tristan Mendoza.  Only no one knows about these.  They tell a story, but not a story that Menina can figure out until she finishes translating the Chronicle.  She had brought the book with her to Spain to try and translate.  As she translates the book, we get glimpses into the second timeline of the story.

This second timeline takes place in the late 1400's and early 1500's.  For a large portion of the Chronicle, the narrator is Sor Beatriz, a young aristocratic woman who fell in love and ended up pregnant out of wedlock.  She managed to keep her pregnancy secret and get to Las Golondrinas from Madrid.  She goes into labor pretty much as soon as the convent gates close, and gives birth to a daughter named Salome (Sal-o-may).  Beatriz becomes a nun and raises her daughter in the convent with no judgement from the other nuns.  When the threat of the Inquisition first whispers it's way into the convent, the sisters send a group to the New World to set up an offshoot of their convent in Latin America.  Sor Beatriz's daughter, Salome, is a novice and goes with them.  For much of the story, we don't know their fate.  The Chronicle stays in Spain, and five girls, from ten or so to sixteen, come to the convent for different reasons, but all reasons that could get them killed by the Inquisition.  Esperanza, Pia, Marisol, Sanchia and Luz find themselves in even more danger when the Inquisition lands on the convent's doorstep.  Four of the girls are sent, with the Chronicle, to the New World, hoping that they will find the group that had gone so many years before, but with dowries for the four to marry.  Luz doesn't speak, so she stays in Spain.  At that point, Sor Beatriz's narration is handed to Esperanza for the journey, and for their adventures in Latin America.

At this point, I really don't want to tell any more of the story, because it starts to give away key plot points.  This story is a beautiful story about the connections that women form, and the power that women have just by being female.  It's not in your face, and it's not in your face religious either, which is nice.  It is beautiful because you can connect with the characters, no matter the time period.  It also has a happily ever after for pretty much everyone, although some of those happily ever afters are actually rather sad.  I want to know more about some of the characters though.  I'd like, for instance, to see Ms. Bryan write a story around Menina's best friend Becky, who has had an incredibly interesting career (Ah, that Epilogue.  I'm not going to tell!)

I really hope you read this book.  It's a beautiful story that draws you in.  Certain parts in the beginning feel a little bit long and drawn out, but the set up is important for the rest of the book.  Once you get to Spain, the story seems to rush through and before you know it, you're on the final page.  So this winter, when you're cold and wrapped up in blankets, why don't you pull this one out and visit Spain?