Dams

This is Ada, back in her village after studying abroad in London, and once again driving around with Vicenç Jr. and coming home giddy late in the summer night.

These are Ada's fingers in the morning, charging across the computer keys, capturing and inventing stories, like: the story of Vicenç Sr., the farmer who lost two fingers in a combine and loves to dance, and the story of Josefa Puig who was attacked by a cow, the story of the cow obsessed with seeing the stone that gleams in the darkness inside every creature, the story of Ada's earrings after Vicenç Jr. angrily tossed them into the Sau Reservoir and where they were swallowed by an enormous catfish, the story of the old catfish with gold in its belly who was eventually hauled out of the lake by some eager then regretful boys, and the story of the dams that could not hold in the end, and the water that rushed through the veins, that mercilessly and ecstatically flooded the heart.

Alternating between the story of Ada and Ada's stories, Irene Solà's debut novel is a brilliant and heady ode to life in community, impossible and enduring love, and the wellspring of the imagination that fills everything it touches with magic.

Dams is a testimony to the transformative power of storytelling.