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Winner of the 1998 American Book Award

Spanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto Clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.

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Library Journal Review

Centering on a letter that remains unopened for 26 years, Benítez's impressive saga follows the intertwined lives of three generations of Salvadoran women, the very rich and the very poor, friends and mothers and daughters, mistresses and servants‘and, finally, oppressors and victims and guerrillas. Their lives are played out against the backdrop of the ever-present radio soap-opera serial and the violence and corruption of the police state and civil war of 20th-century El Salvador. Benítez's prose is rich and fluid; one tastes and smells the world of Jacinta and Magda and their mothers and daughters. Like her first novel (A Place Where the Sea Remembers, LJ 9/1/93), this work is another welcome addition to the growing body of Latina literature.‘Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

"In Salvador, coffee steams while it sits," warns the epigraph to this piercing tale of two Salvadoran families. In El Salvador, coffee provides the way of life. Savored by both plantation owners and poverty-stricken pickers, the brew is as much an elixir as it is a divider of the social classes. This addictive novel from Benitez (A Place Where the Sea Remember) follows three generations of the Parietos clan and the family they work for, the Contreras, through the knotted complexities of Salvadoran power and politics from the 1930s to the '70s. Two women are the catalysts: Mercedes Prieto, a pacifist Pipil Indian and wife of a poor coffee picker, survives the destruction of her village and the kidnapping of her son by the National Guard; Elena de Contreras, matriarch of the coffee plantation, harbors a wounded and bitter heart. They, and the children they bear, are locked together by love and loyalty as well as torn apart by betrayals as they are involved in the country's struggles. For all its compassion and anger, Benitez's saga is surprisingly free of propaganda: both classes are capable of deceit and greed, fidelity and kindness. Her Spanish-sprinkled, elegant prose is mesmerizing in its simplicity and frankness. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Drawing on her own childhood memories and family history, Benitez (author of the acclaimed first novel A Place Where the Sea Remembers, 1993) chronicles the day-to-day lives of three generations of women in El Salvador, interwoven with the complex and volatile political history of the country. The intricate relationships between women of great wealth and those who serve them unfold over time to reveal the insidious and often violently destructive impact of social, political, and economic structures. Bitter Grounds is a story of private lives and intimate betrayals, class differences, and unceasing political upheavals from 1933 through 1977. Vivid characters highlight the extreme differences in security, education, resources, and opportunity between the wealthy property and business owners and el pueblo, the people. Steeped in intrigue and rich in detail, this is a beautiful work of fiction that reveals the complicated roots of human drama and lays bare the truth of a troubled nation. A gentle infusion of Spanish words and phrases--always translated--adds to the enjoyment of Benitez's fluid style. --Grace Fill

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Sandra Benitez 's first novel was A Place Where the Sea Remembers . She grew up in El Salvador, attended high school and college in Missouri, and now divides her time between Edina, Minnesota, where she teaches creative writing, and Mexico.