Seven-year-old Chula lives a carefree life in her gated community in Bogot獺, but the threat of car bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations hovers just outside her walls, occasionally appearing on her TV. When her mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the citys guerrilla-occupied neighborhood, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petronas mysterious ways. As both girls families scramble to survive amid the escalating drug war, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy.
Born and raised in Bogot獺, Ingrid Rojas Contreras is also the author of a memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Fruit of the Drunken Tree was a silver medal winner from the California Book Awards and a New York Times editors choice.
Because Fruit of the Drunken Tree is a beautifully written, compulsively readable account of two girls growing up in daily fear of unimaginable loss and violence.
I remember being a young person and being completely alarmed by what was happening, and also feeling like maybe there wasnt an adult in the room, says Ingrid Rojas Contreras on the Living Writers podcast. Listen to the whole three-question interview .