So Far from God

A Novel

Ana Castillo

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9780393347937
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

One of The Atlantic 's Great American Novels? Winner of the 2024 Richard Harris Award
The beloved feminist classic of Chicano literature that "could be the offspring of a union between One Hundred Years of Solitude and General Hospital: a sassy, magical, melodramatic love child who won't sit down—and the reader can hope—will never shut up…As readable as a teen-aged sister's secret diary—and as impossible to resist" (Barbara Kingsolver, Los Angeles Times Book Review ). "Wacky, wild, y bien funny." —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House of Mango Street and Women Hollering Creek "Castillo is una storyteller de primera… So Far from God is the novel that wasn't there before but which I'd been missing." —Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

In Tome, a small, seemingly sleepy New Mexico hamlet, Sofia and her four fated daughters reveal a world of marvels where the comic and horrific, past and present, real and fantastic coexist and collide.

Over two crowded decades, Sofia tries to hold things together following the disappearance of her husband, Domingo, he of the Clark Gable mustache and the uncontrollable gambling habit. Adventurous Esperanza, Chicana campus radical turned television news reporter, travels farthest from home only to be reeled back in spirit. Beautiful Caridad, a nurse who dulls the pain of being jilted with nightly bouts of alcohol and anonymous sex finally finds love again—and a sharp drop off a tall cliff. Practical Fe, dutiful bank worker who wishes more than anything for stability, upon being dumped by her fiancé, lets out a year-long primal scream. And mysterious La Loca, dies (maybe?) and is resurrected at age three, leaving her both attuned to higher spiritual frequencies and allergic to human touch.

Exuberant and powerful, funny and profound, So Far from God is "a hymn to the endurance of women, both physical and spiritual" ( Washington Post Book World ).

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. An Account of the First Astonishing Occurrence in the Lives of a Woman Named Sofia and Her Four Fated Daughters; and the Equally Astonishing Return of Her Wayward Husband
• 2. On Caridad’s Holy Restoration and Her Subsequent Clairvoyance: Both Phenomena Questioned by the Doubting Tomases of Tome
• 3. On the Subject of Doña Felicia’s Remedios, Which in and of Themselves Are Worthless without Unwavering Faith; and a Brief Sampling of Common Ailments Along with Cures Which Have Earned Our Curandera Respect and Devotion throughout War and Peace
• 4. Of the Further Telling of Our Clairvoyant Caridad Who After Being Afflicted with the Pangs of Love Disappears and Upon Discovery Is Henceforth Known as La Armitaña
• 5. An Interlude: On Francisco el Penitente’s First Becoming a Santero and Thereby Sealing His Fate
• 6. The Renewed Courtship of Loca’s Mom and Dad and How in ’49 Sofia Got Swept Off Her Feet by Domingo’s Clark Gable Mustache, Despite Her Familia’s Opinion of the Charlatan Actor
• 7. Caridad Reluctantly Returns Home to Assume a Life as What Folks in “Fanta Se” Call a Channeler
• 8. What Appears to Be a Deviation of Our Story but Wherein, with Some Patience, the Reader Will Discover That There Is Always More Than the Eye Can See to Any Account
• 9. Sofia, Who Would Never Again Let Her Husband Have the Last Word, Announces to the Amazement of Her Familia and Vecinos Her Decision to Run for la Mayor of Tome
• 10. Wherein Sofia Discovers La Loca’s Playmate by the Acequia Has an Uncanny Resemblance to the Legendary Llorona; the Ectoplasmic Return of Sofi’s Eldest Daughter; Fe Falls in Love Again; and Some Culinary Advice from La Loca
• 11. The Marriage of Sofia’s Faithful Daughter to her Cousin, Casimiro, Descendant of Sheepherders and Promising Accountant, Who, by all Accounts, Was Her True Fated Love; and of Her Death, Which Lingers Among Us All Heavier than Air
• 12. Of the Hideous Crime of Francisco el Penitente, and His Pathetic Calls Heard Throughout the Countryside as His Body Dangled from a Piñon like a Crow-Picked Pear; and the End of Caridad and Her Beloved Emerald, Which We Nevertheless Will Refrain from Calling Tragic
• 13. The Final Farewell of Don Domingo, sin a Big mitote; and an Encounter with un Doctor Invisible, or Better Known in These Parts as a Psychic Surgeon, Who, in Any Case, Has No Cure for Death
• 14. Doña Felicia Calls in the Troops Who Herein Reveal a Handful of Their Own Tried and Proven Remedios; and Some Mixed Medical Advice Is Offered to the Beloved Doctor Tolentino
• 15. La Loca Santa Returns to the World via Albuquerque Before Her Transcendental Departure; and a Few Random Political Remarks from the Highly Opinionated Narrator
• 16. Sofia Founds and Becomes la First Presidenta of the Later-to-Become World-Renowned Organization M.O.M.A.S.; and a Rumor Regarding the Inevitability of Double Standards Is (We Hope) Dispensed With
• Praise
• Copyright Page