When
Angela turns up in a remote Spanish mountain village, she is so tall and so
thin and so pale that everyone thinks she is a ghost or a fairy or the dreadful
mantequero that comes in the night and sucks the fat from your bones.
But
Domingo knows better. "Soy Angela," she said to him when they met—"I
am an angel." Only later did he realize that she was telling him her name
and by then it was too late and everyone knew her as Domingo's Angel.
This
is the story of their love affair. But it is also the story of the people of
the tiny mountain village—the indomitable Rosalba—shopkeeper, doctor, midwife
and wise woman, who makes it her business to know everything that goes on in
the village; Guillermo, the mayor, whose delusions of grandeur are rooted in
his impoverished childhood; and Salva the Baker, who risked his life and
liberty to give bread to the starving children.
The
events in this story are based on the real experiences of the people of the
White Villages in Southern Spain and their struggle to keep their communities
alive through the years of war and the oppression of Franco's rule.
This
book was engaging and entertaining as well as informative, but I kept
forgetting the time period. No one in the town had indoor plumbing or
cars. When Guillermo the mayor turned up
with a car, I pictured something from the early twentieth century; not post
World War II. I guess I was pretty
spoiled growing up in Chicago in a house with electricity, a television, and
two cars. I didn’t realize the kind of
poverty other people endured, even though I had relatives in the country who
still had outhouses.
At
any rate, the characters in Domingo’s Angel hooked me, especially the
irrepressible Rosalba, through whom we learn most of the history of the town as
Generalissimo Franco takes over and kills or conscripts an entire generation of
men, plundering, raping, and plunging the town into poverty and starvation “for
the good of the people.” Yet, when
Angela arrives she finds the people celebrating their festivals and life going
on as though it had never been disturbed.
She finds warmth and humor and happiness and she shares it with us. Domingo’s Angel is has its dark side, but in
the end, it’s a feel-good read.
Length: 175 Pages
Price: $5.99
You’ll
notice I always include the publisher’s buy link. That’s because authors usually receive 40% of
the book price from the publisher.
Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%. When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes &
Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author,
editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left. So, if this book costs $4.99 at MuseItUp or Secret
Cravings and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.00. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author
will receive about sixty cents.
Downloading
the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file
from your computer to a USB flash drive.
Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and
simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books
directory. I actually download my books
using “Save As” to a “Books” file on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher,
friends, and “books to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from
there. That way, if there’s a glitch
with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.
Your author will be happy you did when s/he sees his/her royalty
statement.
