Mariquita: A Novel

A sweeping, sun‑lit prairie stretches across a state as large as England and Wales, its endless horizon lit by wind and sky. The land feels both solitary and alive, where prairie waves, lone rivers, and roaming wolves shape a quiet, open world. In this vastness, small details—tiny wildlife, distant trees— whisper of a life hidden beneath the broad sweep of light.

Mariquita, twenty and newly returned to her isolated homestead after her mother's death, discovers that the prairie is both her home and her sanctuary. Raised by a blend of New England Puritan and Spanish‑Mexican influences, she bears dark hair and eyes that contrast with her mother's golden features, and she carries a quiet devotion that she fulfills alone beneath a lone tree, imagining the church she has never heard. As she tends her father's house and her own solitude, she begins to sense a deeper yearning that the open land cannot fully answer.