Fruit of the drunken tree

Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogota. But threats of kidnappings car bombs and assassinations hover just outside the walls where drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities. When their mother hires a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona whose unusual behavior belies more than shyness. In lush prose Rojas Contreras contrasts two very different but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories.--back cover