Main characters: Mara Denis, her mother Lila and grandmother Catalina
Mara, a middle-aged journalist has returned to her Spanish islands of origin, the Canary Islands, in pursuit of a story about African immigrants dying at sea. Her mother, Lila, who lives in Miami, want Mara to find her grandmother’s birth certificate on the from Santa Cruz. Lila’s own mother was a mystery to her.
Mara joins the immigrants of the world in a quest for knowledge of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’. Solving her grandmother’s identity becomes part, in fact overtakes, the investigative journey. She realizes that the dreams of immigrants upon landing are always grander than what was left behind. The hard work to fulfil them and then their inevitable loss when confronted with intractable forms of opposition or insurmountable challenges are the common experiences and hard realities of the sojourner in new lands.
Canadian Stories 