The Lacuna was published by HarperCollins in 2009 and won the Orange Prize for Fiction. Harrison William Shepherd is a half-Mexican, half-American boy who grows up in Mexico City in the 1930s, working as a cook and secretary in the household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Through them, he meets Leon Trotsky during his Mexican exile and is present on the day of Trotsky’s assassination in 1940.
Shepherd moves to the United States, settles in Asheville, North Carolina, and becomes a successful novelist — writing historical romances set in ancient Mexico. But his Mexican past, his associations with Communists (however innocent), and his private life make him a target when HUAC and McCarthyism descend. The “lacuna” of the title means both “gap” and “underwater cave” — the missing spaces in history, the things that are never recorded, the silences that allow lies to fill the void.
Kingsolver constructs the novel from Shepherd’s diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, and his secretary’s annotations — a documentary collage that itself contains lacunae. The parallel between 1930s Mexican political violence and 1950s American political paranoia is the novel’s structural argument.
Collecting The Lacuna
First edition (HarperCollins, New York, 2009): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $15–$30
- Signed first: $40–$80