At the beginning of the 20thCentury, Spain has been annexed to the largest empire that Europe has ever seen. After pacification, the military elites choose a small town in Extremadura as a prize for the leaders of the occupation. Eva Holman, one of their wives, lives in an idyllic retreat, leading a peaceful, untroubled existence until she receives an unexpected visit from a man who will start by occupying her property and end up taking over her life.
The Earth We Tread explores our ties to the land, our birthplace but also the planet that supports us. These relationships range from the brutal commercialization of power to the pleasant emotions of a man tending to his crop in the shade of an oak tree. And between these two extremes one woman struggles to find true meaning in her life, a revelation that her upbringing has kept at bay.
In the same rich, precise prose as his previous novel Intemperie (Out in the Open), in this book Jesús Carrasco explores humanity’s infinite capacity to withstand hardship, the revelation of empathy when the other ceases to be a stranger in our eyes and the nature of a love greater than we are. This is a thrilling read, a book that might just change your perspective on the world.
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