Where There Was Fire

Where there was fire, ashes remain . . .

Costa Rica, 1968.

A deadly fire rips through the American Fruit Company's most lucrative banana plantation, destroying all evidence of a massive cover-up.

That same night, Teresa Cepeda Valverde’s mother is murdered, and her husband vanishes into the darkness.

Decades later, as a hurricane twists through the streets of Barrio Ávila, Teresa’s estranged daughter Lyra begins to piece together the mysteries lost in the blaze. In her desire to find the truth of her own family's rupture, she uncovers a web of devastating betrayals, stoked by machismo, jealousy and greed.

Where There Was Fire brims with ancestral spirits, omens and the forces of nature. John Manuel Arias’s extraordinary debut novel weaves a brilliant tapestry of love – lost and found again – and, ultimately, redemption.

‘A haunting, operatic saga of family, history and place. . . An utterly original, unforgettable tale of family that will sear a place in the reader's soul’ - Xochitl Gonzalez, bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming

‘An ambitious debut novel . . . The combination of legend and dream sequences, characters spellbound by hallucinations, toxic odours and huge cane toads, adds to the sense of a society ill at ease with nature and itself’ - Times Literary Supplement