SummaryA perfect combination of history, passion, imagination and
scholarship, Yxta Maya Murray's The Conquest pulses with
the intangible essence that separates the books we love
from the few that forever imprint themselves in our minds. A restorer of rare books and manuscripts, Sara Gonzales
lives in a solitary world filled with dusty broken books. A
born reader, Sara is doing with her life just what she set
out to do, even at the expense of true love. When Sara is assigned to restore a banned and scandal-
filled sixteenth century book called The Conquest, she does
not yet know that the story will consume her,
intellectually and emotionally, causing her to reevaluate
her own sense of history as well as to question the
decisions that have brought her to where she now finds
herself. Reputed to have been written by a notorious Spanish monk,
The Conquest recounts the fantastic sexual adventures of an
Aztec princess enslaved by Cortés after his conquest of
what is now modern-day Mexico. Sent to Europe so that she
may perform before the aristocracy, the princess soon
becomes all the rage at court, an artist's muse, and a
mortal danger to those who destroyed her world. Enthralled
by the tale, Sara suspects that no monk wrote it, and she
plunges into the mystery of the book's origin. As Sara swims through the archives of the famed Getty
Museum, the book captures more than just her curiosity. It
becomes a cultural allegory of her own existence. In her
own life, Sara has not resolved the conflicts of her broken
family. While her father refuses to remember the past, she
cannot forget her mother's untimely death. Sara's painful
history that threatens her romance with the man she's
always loved. It is The Conquest that leads Sara to an
understanding of what she values most. Filled with swashbuckling adventure and scholarly mystery,
as well as a deep sense of our connection to history and
its fallibility, The Conquest reminds us that books exist
not only as doorways to other worlds, but also to help
guide us toward discovering who we are and what we dare
dream to one day become. A book for book lovers, The
Conquest is Yxta Maya Murray's finest and most ambitious
novel yet.
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