In the Name of Salome.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

In the Name of Salome, by Julia Alvarez. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2000.

Before she leaves the house, Camila Henriquez makes the sign of the cross and prays: "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of my mother Salome." The gesture captures the intensity of Camila's devotion to her mother, Salome Urena, who died when Camila was just a toddler. In this beautifully crafted novel, Julia Alvarez re-creates the lives of these two fascinating, true-life Dominican luminaries--Camila Henriquez and Salome Urena--and weaves into her tale over a century of Dominican history.

When Salome Urena was born in 1850, Santo Domingo had been under siege for years. First Haiti invaded, then Spain. Then civil war broke out between two groups that, as a child, Salome knew only as the Reds and the Blues. Her earliest memories were of bombs exploding, causing her and her sister to scramble under the house for protection. While she was still little her parents separated--she later learned that her father had been maintaining a separate household on the side--and even after their partial reconciliation, family life was disrupted every time the Blues came to power and her father had to leave the country. In this unstable, politically charged atmosphere, Salome grew up to be a poet and a fierce patriot, earning public acclaim at seventeen for her fervently nationalistic verses. She married Francisco Henriquez, known as Pancho, who would be president of the Dominican Republic for four months, and with whom she would have three sons and Camila. She devoted the rest of her short life to poetry and to educating Dominican girls to serve their struggling homeland.

But Salome was more than a political icon. She was a passionate woman, whose erotic poetry raised eyebrows. Her poem "Quejas" [Plaints], which she wrote for Pancho, was so powerful it actually provoked his marriage proposal. However, no sooner were they wed than this ardent admirer became a demanding, domineering critic, making demands on her output and "polishing" her verse.

About the same time, his political career began to take off. He had to travel. He had been a teacher, and she took over his duties, although at the time it was highly irregular for a woman to teach boys. Her pedagogical gifts led her to start the first secondary school for girls in Santo Domingo, but the motivating force behind this and other accomplishments wasn't her husband, but Eugenio...