The Bitch

Damaris lives in a shack on a bluff above Colombia's rough Pacific coast, where the jungle presses close and nothing can be counted on. Her husband is a fisherman. The marriage that once felt warm has grown cool, and the child she has always wanted has never come. Her uncle tells her she has reached the age when women dry up, and the remark stays with her.

Then a motherless puppy comes her way, and Damaris takes it in at once, with an eagerness that surprises even her. Caring for the animal stirs something raw and old. Her most painful losses and her deepest longings rise up together, and she has no idea how much she is risking by letting herself love this small creature so completely.

Pilar Quintana tells the story in lean, clipped prose that matches the reticent villagers around her heroine. The novel looks closely at the instinct to nurture and the equally fierce need to be nurtured in return, and at how close tenderness can sit to rage. It also draws a sharp picture of class and motherhood in a hard, isolated place.

The book was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.