The Possession of Alba Díaz is the third book I’ve read by Isabel Cañas and it might be my favorite so far. This book is stuffed with so many things I love: supernatural mysteries, actual history that will send me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, possibly star-crossed love. This book is incredible!
Our story begins very far away and a long time ago. Elías, an alchemist with a shady past, receives word in Constantinople that his father has died in Nueva España. It’s only when he meets with his grandfather in Madrid that Elías learns that his father died with debts so massive they could send the entire Monterrubio family into poverty. Elías is informed that the only way to rescue his family is to travel to Zacatecas, where his father bought into a mine, and work until he saves enough silver from the city’s mine to save them all. Needless to say, Elías is not happy. Cañas then whisks us away to Zacatecas and another unhappy character weighted down with family expectations. Alba Díaz de Bolaños is expected to marry well. This means that she is supposed to marry a wealthy man; it doesn’t matter if they like each other or not. Alba manages to wrangle a proposal from an old friend, Carlos Monterrubio. Her plan to marry the kind Carlos might’ve worked if plague hadn’t broken out in Zacatecas, sending everyone with money into the literal hills to wait for the disease to burn itself out.
Then, things get even more interesting.
I don’t want to spoil the deliciously tense atmosphere Cañas creates for her characters to stew in. That said, Cañas lets us in on Alba’s other secret. She is a foundling. None other than Elías’s father found her in the Monterrubio mine when she was an infant. Alba’s mother was so desperate for a child that she adopted the wee girl. No one knows much more than this, so Alba seizes the opportunity to travel to the mine to find anyone who might have known where she came from. Once Alba steps foot near the mine and the Monterrubio’s rustic house (named Casa Calavera or Skull House, for extra spookiness), she finds that the mine has a strange power over her. She begins hearing things and sleepwalking. The only one willing to listen to her is Elías, the only man she’s ever met who makes her heart race.
The Possession of Alba Díaz is one of those books that I fall into slowly, at first, then start to race through as the plot picks up. I was hooked on the setting and Cañas’s descriptive writing. I’m a sucker for books set in the eighteenth century, especially ones set in places I haven’t “visited” before. Once Cañas had me hooked with the setting and Alba and Elías’s secrets, she carried me away with an incredible plot that involved the Inquisition, colonial brutality, the trap of propriety, questions about who is friend or foe, and the supernatural. I cannot say enough great things about this novel or Cañas’s writing. If anything in this review sounds interesting, hurry to pre-order it or get on the wait list at your local library. You’ll thank me later.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
