Orquídea Divina has summoned her scattered family home so that they can attend her funeral.  Simultaneously the center of the family and an enigma, she blesses her descendants with a magical inheritance instead of the information about her past that they crave, and then transforms.  Seven years later, the magic begins to fray.  Three of her grandchildren must travel to Orquídea's home, Ecuador, to understand the woman she was and the power they need to protect their family.

Such a wonderful, lovely, lush book.  Intensely atmospheric, particularly the chapters in Ecuador.  Magical realism is such a fantastic vehicle for Cordova's thoughts about education in the US, its accessibility, and its function as a white institution for people of color, and the way colonizer culture writes off the traditional experiences (particularly craft/art and health) of people of color writ large.

I think this book would have benefitted from a little more sense of timelessness, or of being set in a place without time.  There's no dates ever given, but there are references to texting alongside using a personal CD player, and while I know those things coexisted, any reference to trying to set a time period was kind of jarring.

I loved this book.  It's a great book for transitioning in or out of summer -- things growing, things dying, things transmuting.  If this is your introduction to magical realism, you've got to check out some of the greats (I really love Isabel Allende).  If you'd like more magical realism/fabulism family sagas, try Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune by Roselle Lim or Emily Henry's YA.