Alfaguara 2008

In 1936, the Schwart family, immigrants desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in the United States. The father, a high school teacher, is relegated to the only job available to him: gravedigger and cemetery watchman.

Local prejudices and the Schwarts’ emotional fragility give rise to a terrible family tragedy.

Rebecca, the gravedigger’s daughter, then embarks on her astonishing journey through “deep America,” an odyssey of erotic risk and daring imagination that will force her to reinvent herself.