The Winds of Maracaibo

A Novel

By: María Elena Morán, Madeline Jones - translator

A propulsive family drama, the story of a woman determined to recover her kidnapped daughter amid the ruins of Chávez’s social revolution—the fast-paced English-language debut of an award-winning and bestselling author that brings the Venezuelan migrant crisis to life in lyrical, seething prose, for readers of Elizabeth Acevedo, Jesmyn Ward, and Gabriela Garcia

It was too late now, y la ternura no basta—now that she’d tasted the gunpowder, and the gunpowder was bolivariano, revolutionary. And that unthinkable traitor Camilo was using it to blow up her life.

“Elisa left with Camilo.” “Camilo took her out of the country.”

These are the text messages Nina receives while living in the storage room of a university in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where she’s cleaning houses to make money to send back home.

Home is 4,500 miles away, in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where the water never runs on Mondays and there’s yet another blackout. Where a trip to the grocery store costs 220 times the minimum wage.

Home is Elisa, her thirteen-year-old daughter, who loves to run around the house and belt out Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” Who should be growing, when instead her waist is shrinking. Home is Graciela, Nina's mother, who lately stays shut up in her room all day talking with her dead, most urgently her beloved husband, Raúl (who’s just as eager to talk back from the grave).

And what the hell does Camilo think he’s doing now, stealing off with their daughter to the United States of America—the one place Nina most assuredly never wants to call home?

Narrated through the voices of Nina and her family, and through the voice of her treacherous ex, Camilo, The Winds of Maracaibo is the heart-racing tale of a mother fighting to get her daughter back across the border, at any cost—a brave and furious reversal of the American Dream and an ode to the Venezuelan women who gave their blood, sweat, and tears to a nation dismantled by the egos of men.

Critic reviews

"The Winds of Maracaibo is a novel that upends preconceived notions about the crisis in Venezuela, northbound migration, and limbos both bureaucratic and spiritual. Moving yet unsentimental, unsparing yet hopeful." —Darrow Farr, author of The Bombshell

“While trying to survive abroad, Nina is forced to return to her own history. When the secrets of the past push her to search for something that no longer exists—family, love, the revolution—she discovers that her only possible country lies in the things she cares most for. With brilliant writing that strikingly blends different voices and registers, María Elena Morán turns tragedy into an adventure; she takes us on an extraordinary journey of fiction and language that manages to evoke, from the outside, the intimacy of a country.” —Alberto Barrera Tyszka, author of Hugo Chávez

"With its rich and unrestrained prose, which gives no pause, which is like a river or a marathon, Morán brings chaos to life. A novel to feel the tragedy of Venezuela and its migrants in one's own flesh. A new voice worth reading." —Pilar Quintana, author of Abyss

"This is a great book. If you want to know what really happened to the Venezuelan people through the Chávez revolution, this is the book to read. María Elena Morán is a gifted writer, a master storytelling." —César Miguel Rondón, Venezuelan journalist and writer

"A novel of enormous literary scope on Venezuelan immigration." —Diego Gándara, La Razón

"The Winds of Maracaibo drags you, shakes you, excites you, exhausts you, and moves you. Like living another life, more difficult than yours, more intense. Like crying for what will never be." —La Sexta