Their personal journeys are set against an incredible backdrop of Brazilian history and politics during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the North American stock market crashed and provoked a “crisis” in Brazil, when political parties fought for the hearts and minds of Brazilians, when women agitated for the vote, when the cangaceiros were at perhaps the height of their power, when Brazil thought about signing on with the Germans at the beginning of their power grab, and when the government was trying to connect the interior of the country with the exterior.
Frances de Pontes Peebles' first novel is a remarkable feat of research, industry, writing, and beauty. She has fashioned a story of love, betrayal, politics, and history with a set of memorable characters and a plot that keeps the reader swept along, even as it full of minute and careful, nearly painstaking detail. Entire conversations are rendered, descriptions of the interior's brush, the land, the homes, the fashions, events, faces, battles, are constructed so that while the readers is engaged in the novel, it is not a cliché to say that it is nearly like being in the country.
At a time when first novels are being rejected right and left, when the American publishing industry seems to be always on the verge of its death throes, when new writers can’t catch a break, and when big fat novels just aren’t cool, this 656-page genre-defying page-turner must have been a risk for both the literary agent who represented it and Harper Collins, who bought it. I applaud everyone who had a hand in it. The Seamstress just won Elle Magazine’s Fiction Grand Prix 2008 and if there is justice it should win a number of other awards and many thousands of grateful, appreciative readers.
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