Book Review: Last Sunset in San Miguel
Last Sunset in San Miguel. Rita Dragonette. Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 9, 2027, print,
270 pages
Reviewed by Lisa Lickel.
La Querencia – a place or moment of safety and security, where you can be your true self – is the fulcrum of Dragonette’s latest novel. It’s no accident the Spanish term is feminine, as the author explores a woman’s attempt to find such a moment, a place, and whether it truly exists.
Last Sunset in San Miguel reaches out to that audience who embraces the “last third of life,” as Rachel Barnes, US expat in Mexico, puts it while she works unabashedly to recreate a life for herself. Once a popular coach guiding business executives toward success, a later-in-life marriage to her boss quickly unraveled and shattered her rose-colored glasses.
Choosing not to fight back to gather the shreds of her reputation, Rachel takes a severance package and runs south to seek the safety and security she had oddly been introduced to at a bullfight on her honeymoon, less than a year earlier.
On the honeymoon visit to the bullfight, she had sat next to a “gray-haired, slightly stooped Mexican woman.” Rachel had been about to leave the arena when the mystery of la querencia was revealed. “‘You must not go so soon,” the woman had said. “You have not yet seen enough. Stay.” Some bulls run to a place in the ring where they feel safe, where the matador allows them time to process and rest.
When Rachel returns to San Miguel, Sylvia, who turns out to be another expat with above-average sympatico, mentors her as she buys and develops a business of her own, serving other expats with specialty drinks and always and (only) an ever-changing daily trio of appetizers devised by her native chef and taste-tested by her friends.
Coaching entrepreneurs often meant developing lasting relationships, and several of those “relationships” follow their former coach to Mexico, settling more or less successfully, into the unique camaraderie of the expatriate community.
“You know what I love the most about meeting you all here in San Miguel?” Kiki, one of Rachel’s friends, says. “That we’re like a family. And we’ve all reached that age where we don’t have to one-up each other.”
While Rachel may believe she’d found her safe place, she keeps tight control of her life. She lives in her mentor’s bequeathed home, operates her business only a few strict hours a day, and resolutely refuses to learn Spanish.
Three years into her carefully laid plans, (someone laughs), three omens signal a change. About the time Rachel’s messed-up ex-husband Rob decides to show up in San Miguel, her messed-up cousin and his messed-up garage band buddy decide Rachel should hit up her former husband for money, and her best friend introduces her to a potential love interest. “I’d know when it was time to leave San Miguel,” Rachel says, “that there would be signs. It was impossible to ignore that I’d just seen several neon blinking ones.”
The constellations rapidly disintegrate as Rachel learns her cousin is in actual physical danger, Rob’s presence resurrects issues Rachel thoughts she’d left at home, and her current friendships tatter. It’s time to leave San Miguel. “I no longer felt safe, and I blamed it on Rob.”
Told in Dragonette’s mature and natural wordsmithing, descriptions melt across the page in particularly lovely fashion. In one place Rachel describes a child, “A toddler with coffee-bean eyes and a finger in her mouth…hid her head behind her love-worn stuffed rabbit, then peeked out again and again, her abuela keeping a firm watch to ensure my tolerance didn’t tip from enjoyment to irritation. The abuela wasn’t much older than me, I noticed…”
Dragonette describes her story as an “homage to The Sun Also Rises,” and while there are parallels, Dragonette’s characters have more goals, more purpose and complexity. Their bull fights are among themselves. Not quite The Last of Mr. Norris, and deeper than Under the Tuscan Sun, readers who enjoy stories set in different places with a pinch of spice and danger and romance will enjoy this novel.
Last Sunset in San Miguel is a thoughtful and thought-provoking story about forgiving and realizing that we all need a little la querencia inside of us.
