Mother Tongue

Mary is nineteen, subject to depression, and still grieving over the death of her mother when she meets Jose Luis, a political refugee from El Salvador. Though ostensibly Mary plans simply to help Jose Luis adjust to his new life in the United States, she has another agenda - she plans to fall in love with this man whose life seems so fundamentally different from her own. During the early days of their relationship, Jose Luis, a student and poet, teaches Mary to speak Spanish and slowly reveals his terrifying past to her. In return, Mary offers him the alms of sex and adoration, hoping that she will be able "to take the war out" of him and in the process find definition in her seemingly meaningless life. This is a novel about searching - about a woman looking for herself in a man, about a man looking for his place in the world, about two people who find each other but do not find the simple solutions that romantic love supposedly offers young lovers.