You CAN FEEL THE NORTH. It takes hold ofyou, marks you.No matter how far you move from its center of gravity,you are invariably drawn to it by an invisible current, like water droplets to the earth, like a needle to a magnet, like blood to blood, desire to desire.
My origins are in the north, in the first look of love between my grandparents, in the first brush of their hands. The project I would later become was begun with the birth of my mother. I had only to wait for her desire to be united with my father's for me to be drawn irrevocably into this world.
At what precise moment did the powerful, magnetic gaze of the north meet that of the sea? Because the other haft of my origin comes from the sea, from the origin of my origin. My father was born near the sea. There, before the green waves, my grandparents' desires became one: to give him a place in this word...
As the millions of fans of Like Water for Chocolate know, Laura Esquivel is a romanticist whose novels explore the power of love and the truths of the human heart. She returns to those themes in Swift as Desire, the story of a loving and passionate man who has the gift of bringing happiness to everyone except his own wife.
The hero of this novel is Jubilo Chi, a telegraph operator who is born with the ability to "hear" people"s true feelings and respond to their most intimate, unspoken desires. His life changes forever the day he falls deeply and irrevocably in love with Lucha, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy family. She believes money is necessary to ensure happiness,while for Jubilo, who is poor, love and desire are more important than possessions. But their passion for each other enables them to build a happy life together--until their idyll is shattered by a terrible event that drives them bitterly apart. Only years later, as Jubilo lies dying, is his daughter able to unravel the mystery behind her parents" long estrangement and bring about a surprising reconciliation.
