Secret of Old Blood

Arranged marriages.

A runaway bride. Sisters. Adultery. Witchcraft. A Woman doctor.
Secrets.
The Sandoval diaries.

   When Alma flees with her young lover to Texas to escape an arranged marriage with a much older man, she sets in motion a drama that will put the sisters and their legacy at risk.

   Pilar, a 14-year-old tomboy, is offered as a replacement bride, and what follows is a sensuous courtship and marriage clouded by the curses of her husband’s former lover, Consuelo. She will stop at nothing, even the use of black magic, in her effort to destroy the Sandoval family.

   The Mexican-American war begins and the Americans invade Santa Fe. The sisters survive the hostilities from two important fronts-New Mexico and Texas.  Their money and ancient knowledge offer some protection, but their lives are changed forever.

The Diaries
A sampling

"Woven among the stories of love and life is eroticism, mystery, witchcraft, folktales, superstition, political intrigue, corruption, and violence."

Dr. Michele Shaul, Co-Editor of the e-journal Label Me Latina/o

Tower and high walls around a Spanish hacienda

Oratoria:

   I entered the wide gates of the Sandoval compound a barefoot slave, but I soon became a favorite of doña Teresa, who was only sixteen and far from her family in Mexico City. Her father-in-law had traded for me — a bag of flour for a ragged peasant girl of five — after I had been captured by Apaches in Mexico. He brought me to this high mountain desert, to the City of Holy Faith, as a wedding present for his son, Estevan, and his bride, Teresa.
     She encouraged me to read the ancient diaries of the Sandoval heiresses, said to contain delectable recipes guaranteed to whet a husband’s appetite and keep him at home. The recipes were there, but so were their fears and ecstasies, their seductions and adulterous affairs. The diaries were cookbooks of love.

Alma in Texas:

“There's a Mexican woman in Pollard's Corner?” I asked. I’d been here for a year, and not heard a word of Spanish.
Reverend Slocum inclined his head, more a twitch than a nod, and focused on his meal. “Inesita Gomez married Gustav Beider, the baker. She stays to home most of the time, especially since the troubles. Most of her family went back to Mexico after they lost their property . . . I imagined Reverend Slocum naked, his pink-sausage body supine before brown-visaged nuns who flayed him with their rosaries.

Alma writing about Pious Pie and Empanadas:

But I would smile, recalling the recipe for Providencia Sandoval’s Pious Pie (the poisoned version). On another day, Bertha might complain loudly that Willy suffered colic because of my Mexican mothering, and I would remember Ignacia Sandoval’s instructions for delectable empanadas made of minced mother-in-law’s tongue (said to induce peace and harmony in your household), or the gonads of your cheating husband (a savory dish to add spice to your lovemaking). Add a little cinnamon and sugar, a few raisins, perhaps—maybe even some brandy—hum a happy song and life goes on.