Gringa Latina: A Woman of Two Worlds (Kodansha Globe)

For the readers of Laura Esquivel and Isabelle Allende, this memoir of a girlhood in Peru is seen from the very different vantage point of an adulthood in the United States. Gabriella De Ferrari, the author of the acclaimed novel A Cloud on Sand, grew up in Peru the daughter of gringos, or foreigners: her parents had come from Italy as newlyweds to set down roots in an exotic and alluring country far from home. Gringa Latina is the account of De Ferrari's privileged upbringing in the small desert town of Tacna, surrounded by the silent Andes. She recalls the wonders of her mother's inventive cuisine, an inspired melding of Italian and Peruvian ingredients; her friendship with her neighbor Se-orita Luisa, doomed to be an old maid because her betrothed left her for someone else; her ties to Saturnina, the Indian maid who taught her about curses and miracles; and her admiration for her father, the trusted sage of their town. Eventually De Ferrari attended college in the United States, whe