Palm Trees in the Snow
Written by Luz Gabás
Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner and Angela Dawe
4/5
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About this audiobook
At once an epic family drama and a sweeping love story that spans both an ocean and a generation, Palm Trees in the Snow is an emotionally gripping and historically vivid tale of the secrets that can destroy a family—and the bonds that endure.
When Clarence of Rabaltué discovers a series of old letters from her father’s past, she begins to doubt everything she thought she knew about her once-noble family. Her father and his brother worked in the colony of Fernando Po, but these letters tell a different story than the tales of life in Africa that made it to the dinner table. Clarence has no idea what really went on during their time at the cocoa plantations—or why no one in her family has ever returned to the island in all the years since. But the letters suggest that a great love story is buried beneath the years of silence.
Setting out from her home in Spain’s snowy mountains, Clarence makes the same journey across the sea that her uncle and father traveled before her. There, she unlocks the painful secrets her family has hidden in the rich African soil. But what she discovers may also be the key to awakening her own listless heart.
Luz Gabás
Luz Gabás was born in 1968 in the city of Monzon, Spain. After spending a year in San Luis Obispo, California, she studied at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, where she graduated with a degree in English literature and later became a lecturer. For years she has combined her academic work with translating, writing articles, researching literature and linguistics, and participating in cultural, theatrical, and cinematic projects. She lives and writes in the beautiful village of Anciles, which neighbors the historic town of Benasque. She is the author of Palmeras en la nieve (Palm Trees in the Snow), which was a best seller upon publication in Spain and was adapted into a major motion picture, and Como fuego en el hielo (Fire and Ice).
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Reviews for Palm Trees in the Snow
53 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I actually saw the movie first on Netflix and impassioned me. The book is even better. Written with great detail. You will laugh when they laugh cry when they cry. I haven’t read a book that left this kind of impression since the Harry Potter books. It’s full of complex relationship tethering one character to another and a complicated past that is long gone but not forgotten.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I've had this book for a while, it was one of my Kindle Firsts from the beginning of the year but it was so long of an audiobook that I procrastinated. I thought of it again when I was looking for another audiobook for Women in Translation Month. Having the rest of the month to finish all 20 hours of listening didn't seem so daunting anymore. Yep, 20 HOURS. It was a good book and worth the read.
Palm Trees in the Snow covers quite a few issues as it moves through the story. There is the good and bad of colonization, scenes in Spain and the island of Bioko, love, unrequited love, brotherly love, interracial relationships in different periods, conflicts over independence, rape, and so much more. It does a great job of representing the conflict between what people believed they were doing when they colonized others forms of civilization and what was really going on. The story does center quite a bit on the white people who colonized the island during the fifties, but there is respect given to that colonizing was not actually the best thing for the inhabitants of the island. To me, it really humanized both sides without casting judgement on either. I particularly love books that do that, not because I think of oppressors as innocent, but I like it when authors let me see it for myself.
I hesitate to rate it higher, despite all the issues it deals well with, because the story itself wasn't unexpected nor did it give some new insight into what colonization was about. It was a good story that I enjoyed reading. I loved the twists and turns and that made me doubt where it was going, but it pretty much went where I expected it too. The time jumps were a big part of the fun between Clarence's investigation into her family's history and hearing the firsthand account of Kilian. As mentioned above, I listened to the audiobook which had two narrators to accommodate the two point of view characters. They were Angela Dawe and Malcolm Hillgartner.