While her mother’s disappointment in Beatriz marrying for convenience rather than love has led to a rift between the two women, Beatriz is determined to make her new home a refuge for them both. Our relationship was founded on one thing and one thing only: my world was a dark, windowless room, and he was a door.Īs soon as she can, she persuades him to take her to his remote countryside estate, Hacienda San Isidro. These two truths made me an enticing mystery to conquest-minded men.īut I was also someone who turned a blind eye to the susurration of rumors circling his widowerhood, and Rodolfo wanted a bride who did not ask too many questions.

A desperate Beatriz uses her social debut in these new circles to seize the only escape she can find, in the form of her handsome suitor Don Rodolfo Eligio Solórzano:Īs beautiful as he was, I had no romantic notions about Rodolfo when I accepted his offer My appearance may have convinced him to look past my father’s politics after all, I was a newcomer to capital society, and I knew I was beautiful. After General Hernández’ death, Beatriz and her Mamá were forced to live off of the sneering generosity of the only Valenzuela relatives who would receive them. Even more absorbingly, the story is set amidst the turmoil immediately after Mexico’s War of Independence, as a young woman flees a Cinderella-like existence only to discover greater horrors lying in store for her.īeatriz Hernández Valenzuela is the only daughter of an executed insurgent general and the criollo woman who was cast out of high society for daring to marry someone so far below her in social status. The title hacienda of Isabel Cañas’ debut novel delivers on that in spades, in this eerie cross between Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House. I love reading a haunted house novel where the haunted house is actually scary.

The hacienda by isabel cañas