In the Name of Salome

This book is wonderful...wow. I was immediately drawn to it since i knew that Julia Alvarez wrote it but once i started reading i fell in a trance. I sat and read it from finish to end without stopping. The way Julia picked each word and made it rhyme with the flow of the story was simply beautiful. I loved this book so much that it is my favorite book. I have read it at least 5 times both in English and Spanish and each time... Read Full Review

A truly amazing book, one of the best I've read in a long time. The way the past and present are combined so perfectly makes for a great story I couldn't put down. Buy it. It's worth it.

No sabía que Julia Alvarez había escrito este libro hasta que me encontré con él en la Feria de Libro que recién finalizó aquí en la República Dominicana. Pensé en un inicio que sería una biografía más, sólo con "nació, fue poeta nacional y murió", sin embargo, al leer el resumen del libro y al pasar unas paginas me percaté que no era así, debo admitir que me impresionaron las primeras 5 líneas del 1er. capítulo. Compré el... Read Full Review

I have read almost all of Julia Alvarez's works and found this one to be best!! I think she is brilliant in interweaving fiction and history. In Salome, she not only weaves fiction and history, but she also transcends time by moving back and forth between Salome's life and Camila's. Through this work of fiction you can truly appreciate one country's fight for independence.

In recent years, literary authors and publishing houses have published dozens of fictionalized accounts of historical figures, with Joyce Carol Oates' BLONDE (Marilyn Monroe) and Russell Banks' CLOUDSPLITTER (John Brown) being prime examples of this genre. Because I'm tiring of such fiction, I never would have bought IN THE NAME OF SALOME if I had known Alvarez had joined this literary trend - and I would have missed... Read Full Review