Blurb:
| eA genre-bending debut with a fiercely political heart, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens explores the weight of the devil’s bargain, following the lengths one man will go to for the promise of freedom. Hugo Contreras’s world in Miami has shrunk. Since his wife died, Hugo’s debt from her medical bills has become insurmountable. He shuffles between his efficiency apartment, La Carreta (his favorite place for a cafecito), and a botanica in a strip mall where he works as the resident babaláwo. One day, Hugo’s nemesis calls. Alexi Ramirez is a debt collector who has been hounding Hugo for years, and Hugo assumes this call is just more of the same. Except this time Alexi is calling because he needs spiritual help. His house is haunted. Alexi proposes a deal: If Hugo can successfully cleanse his home before Noche Buena, Alexi will forgive Hugo’s debt. Hugo reluctantly accepts, but there’s one issue: Despite being a babaláwo, he doesn’t believe in spirits. Hugo plans to do what he’s done with dozens of clients before: use sleight of hand and amateur psychology to convince Alexi the spirits have departed. But when the job turns out to be more than Hugo bargained for, Hugo’s old tricks don’t work. Memories of his past—his childhood in the Bolivian silver mines and a fraught crossing into the United States as a boy—collide with Alexi’s demons in an explosive climax. Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens explores questions of visibility, migration, and what we owe—to ourselves, our families, and our histories. |
It’s Christmas time in Miami and Hugo is anything but merry.
His wife, Meli, recently passed away and Hugo wasn’t even able to pay for her
funeral. Like most Americans he’s been drowning in debt most of his adult life,
and Meli’s medical bills have only added to that. His indebtedness feels like a
physical weight, crushing the life out of him, following him wherever he goes.
Debt collectors hound him every day and garnish his wages. Hugo may not be a
perfect person but he doesn’t deserve the hand he’s been dealt. All of Hugo’s
life has been hard. He never knew his father, a white Spainard, and his mother
abandoned them when he was young. During his childhood in Bolivia, Hugo and his
brother worked in the mines after school. His brother would pray and offer
sacrifices to El Tío,
the god of the mountain, but the mountain still took his life. Hugo was always
a non-believer, but his brother’s death shook his faith even further.
Ironically, Hugo now works at a Botanica and is a practicing Babalawo. Although he
has great respect for Lourdes, his boss, and even has a knack for knowing what
people need, he still thinks it’s all hokum. He is especially talented at
ridding people’s homes of ghosts, using both psychology and showmanship to make
them believe their specters have vanished. Hugo may not believe in what he
does, but the result is the same: his customers are happy and the “hauntings”
end.
The attorney in charge of Hugo’s debt, Alexi, calls out of
the blue and asks for his help. At first, Hugo is hesitant to help the devil
who’s made his life miserable, but when Alexi promises to clear his debt, he acquiesces.
We learn that Alexi, the son of Cuban immigrant parents (part of the Cuban
exodus when affluent Cubans were fleeing Castro), is obsessed with money.
Instead of following his passion of becoming a painter he chose a field that
would make him wealthy because money is more important to him. He loves to show
off his wealth, but as Hugo notes, he lacks taste and his choices in home décor
are gaudy. Alexi is also a racist, as is evident by the “All Lives Matter” sign
in his yard and the way he speaks about his Haitian laborers. Hugo is
conflicted about helping the awful man, but the promise of being debt-free is
too good to pass up. Of course, Hugo is hardly perfect himself, and we learn of
the many mistakes he’s made that still haunt him. With each chapter, the
mystery of Hugo’s life is revealed, and the reader gains an increased
understanding of the deeply flawed protagonist. Hugo is a well-developed,
complicated character. He isn’t perfect and makes lots of mistakes, but he loves his wife
and does his best, making him relatable. I couldn’t help but be drawn to Hugo.
I just felt sorry for the poor guy. Even as I was horrified by some of the
things he did, I still wanted him to win.
A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens is a unique take on
ghosts and haunting. While Alexi seems to be plagued by a literal ghost, Hugo
is haunted by the ghosts of his past and his debt which keep him from happiness
and living his life. As the story unfolds, we learn that Hugo is also indebted
in ways that aren’t financial that have haunted him since childhood. Underneath
the ghost story is a horror tale about Capitalism and its exploitative nature.
While the ways in which it hurts Hugo are obvious, Alexi’s unchecked greed has
caused him to give up on his dreams because he was raised to belief happiness
can only be earned through the accumulation of wealth.
Palma’s descriptions of Miami make the city feel like its own character, a place filled with both beauty and pain and even a little bit of magic. While the story is filled with grief and suffering, it does end on a hopeful note. It reminds me of the Latin phrase “dum spiro spero,” or “while I breathe, I hope.” It may be too late for his wife and brother, but as long as Hugo is still alive there’s always the chance for things to get better for him, even when things are at their worse. While it’s not your typical horror story, the descriptions of hopelessness and grief still left me with a sense of dread. Overall, A Haunting in Hialeah is a strong debut from a talented new horror author.