It seems to work, but the mysterious appearance of a young man they name Fel forces them to unearth their past and the secrets buried in the land. The cousins bury something special to each of them in the earth in exchange for Bay’s life. Once they all find out that each one of them is in love with Bay they fear what their collective love might do to her. The story is propelled by the cousins’ desire to protect their shared love, Bay Briar. The Nomeolvides women are convinced that La Pradera will take whomever they romantically love thus they fear loving someone too hard. They understand this trauma, they might challenge it and refuse it, but, for the most part, they accept it as their burden to bear. For most of the novel, the trauma is associated with the men the land has literally taken from them. Now, they can die if they refuse to grow flowers in the land because then the flowers will just grow inside them and they can die if they try to leave La Pradera.Įstrella and her cousins are heirs to the generational trauma born out of a history of displacement and dispossession. The Nomeolvides women ended up at La Pradera after being chased out of other places having been accused of witchcraft and of making men disappear. Generations of Nomeolvides women live in La Pradera, a land that, although owned by the white and affluent Briar family, has its own powers and resentments.
The Nomeolvides women grow flowers by digging their hands into the earth and allowing the magic inside them to pour out making gardens of the land around them. “Every woman in this house had inherited it, the same way they had inherited the loss and the broken hearts written into their blood” -Anna-Marie McLemore, Wild BeautyĮstrella Nomeolvides refers to her and/or her family as being poison ten times throughout the novel.
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