ALL THAT DIES IN APRIL

by the village healer, Octavia, makes up her mind to follow the mountain streams in the direction they flow, hoping to come to the sea. Relicario is stunned by Lina’s absence and soon decides to follow her. Accompanied by a wise donkey named Jumento and the bones of his mother and father—all of his family he could fit in the cart—Relicario begins a long, arduous journey, guessing Lina’s course at every turn, while his wife forges on before him, entering into worlds and ways of living that Relicario cannot begin to imagine. Meanwhile, a series of coincidences conspires to create a reunion no one in the Ramos\u002DCruz clan could have anticipated, all as the destructive torrents of April begin their seasonal scouring of the land. Spare and yet echoing with voices, Travacio’s English\u002Dlanguage debut captures the haunting cycles of death and displacement but also of life, joy, and the succor of community in a place where “families come together and break apart…as easily as storm clouds in the sky.”"