The Years With Laura Díaz

The Story

The Years with Laura Diaz is Carlos Fuentes's most important novel in several decades. Like his masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz, the action begins in the state of Veracruz & moves to Mexico City--tracing a migration during the Revolution & its aftermath that was a feature of Mexico's demographic history & is a significant element in Fuentes's fictional world. Now the principal figure is not Artemio Cruz (who, however, makes a brief appearance) but Fuentes's first major female protagonist, the extraordinary Laura Diaz. Fuentes's richly woven narrative tapestry of her life from 1905 to 1978--filled with a multitude of witty, heartbreaking scenes & the sounds & colors, tastes & scents of Mexico--shows us this wonderful woman as she grows into a politically committed artist who is also a wife & mother, a lover of great men, & a complicated & alluring heroine whose brave honesty prevails despite her losing a brother, son, & grandson to the darkest forces of Mexico's turbulent, often corrupt politics. In the end, Laura Diaz herself dies, after a life filled with tragedy & loss, but she is a happy woman, for she has borne witness to & helped to affect the course of history, & has loved & understood with unflinching honesty.