The Cemetery of Untold Stories

By Julia Alvarez

Algonquin Books: April 2, 2024

256 pages, $28.00

Believe it or not, The Cemetery of Untold Stories was my first Julia Alvarez book (hangs head in shame). I’ve been meaning to read In the Time of Butterflies and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents for ages, but never seem to get around to them (those poor back catalog books always get overlooked). But I’m glad Cemetery was my first experience of Alvarez’s distinctive and influential style of storytelling. While not auto-fiction, it contains themes of concern to Alvarez, 33 years after publishing her first novel.

Cemetery is the story of a successful Dominican American writer nearing the end of her career who wants to avoid the fate of a writer friend who became obsessed with finishing her novel, to her detriment. Alma Cruz is ready to pack up her unfinished novels and retire to a quiet life in Vermont. When she inherits a small piece of land in Santo Domingo, she decides to turn it into a cemetery for her unfinished work, believing the ritual burial of her boxes of manuscripts will placate the story gods and calm her own soul.

The bulk of the novel concerns a local woman, Filomena, who becomes the caretaker of the cemetery, as much as it does Alma. Each unfinished story has its own grave and headstone, designed by Alma’s artist friend Brava. But the stories refuse to rest in peace. The protagonists begin to speak to Filomena, telling her their stories. The narrative alternates between the present and the past as Bienvenida Trujillo, the wife of the Dominican Republic’s former dictator, Rafael Trujillo (a key character in Butterflies), and Dr. Manuel Cruz, a dissident who fled to the United States, tell their complicated and riveting life stories.

We learn about Dominican history, the immigrant experience, the sacrifices made for love and family, and why certain stories are never told but should be. I loved watching Alma settle into a quiet life in her working-class neighborhood, her touchy relationship with her sisters, the way Filomena blossoms under the influence of Alma and the stories she is privileged to be told, and the depiction of the various lives Dominican immigrants and their children ended up living in the U.S. It’s a warm, bittersweet, playful novel with a big cast of characters, lots of drama, lovely prose, and a message that will resonate with passionate readers.

Now it’s time to read How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of Butterflies. Better late than never, right?