Summary and Reviews of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by Victoria Schwab

I

Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Spain

1521

The widow arrives on a Wednesday.

María remembers, because Wednesdays are for bathing, and her hair takes an age to dry after it's been washed and combed. She remembers, because it is warm for the end of April, and she is sitting in a patch of sun at the edge of the yard, sucking on a cherry pit (one of the first of the season) and holding a lock up to the light to see if the hair is turning darker, or if it is simply still damp.

María's mother says she is becoming too vain, but then, her mother is the one who makes her go to bed each week with clay in her hair, hoping it will mute the glaring strands. As far as María can tell, it isn't working. If anything, the hair looks even brighter.

She would not mind so much, María's mother, if the hair were honey-colored, or earthy, even auburn, but such an angry shade of red, she says, is a bad omen. Not a warm color, but the hot orange of an open flame. One she cannot seem to douse.

...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. From Spain (sixteenth century) and Italy (seventeenth century) to England (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), Paris in 1914, and contemporary Scotland and America, the novel transports us to a dazzling array of moments in the human experience, in sumptuous detail. Which time and place—and wardrobe—would you most want to slip into?
2. As you watched Maria's childhood unfold, what did she do in order to gain even a smidgen of control over her life, no matter how strict the cultural limitations were? How would you have fared in that world?
3. When Hector introduces Sabine to the verses that begin with "Bury my bones in the midnight soil," he insists that "we are no monster, no mean thing. We are nature's fi nest fl ower" (...