Mireya's Wedding

About the Book

Set in Costa Rica, the tiny country wedged between Panama and Nicaragua in Central America, Mireya’s Wedding is a somewhat fictionalized account of real events, involving a widowed mother’s desperate, sometimes machiavellian attempts, to keep her eldest daughter from ruining her life: to separate her from the married man who has fathered her child; to separate her also from the young man who has gallantly given the child his name but who otherwise has proved unsatisfactory as a suitor; and to maneuver her into marriage with a young foreigner the girl does not love but whom the mother views as ideal.

What makes the task of the mother, Doña Mireya Avendaño Carvajal, especially difficult is that the environment in which she lives has changed greatly from that of her youth, when the society was essentially agricultural, with life guided and controlled by nature, a tight-knit family structure and the traditional religion. It was a time the population was limited in numbers, by nature and by ignorance with regard to enlightened health measures. Mireya, in her lifetime, has seen agriculture giving way to industry and commerce and the country flooded with tourists, from a few thousand a year to nearly a million. And with improvement in health conditions, resulting largely from a system of socialized medicine, the population has exploded. The society has become infinitely more complex, and the government itself has difficulty dealing with the problems – among them that of increasing crime. For many people nature, family and the traditional religion no longer provide adequate guides to conduct; unfortunately, they have found nothing to replace the old steering mechanisms, and there is widespread disorientation in the face of the many changes.

In a society such as this, Mireya, a kind of Latin American Mother Courage, flounders, beset by numerous problems in a society traditionally dominated by men. Yet, she is tenacious in the face all of the challenges and in the end manages to guide her daughter toward a settled, rewarding life.

About the Author

The author of Mireya’s Wedding has had a long association with Costa Rica, as a professor of English as a Second Language in the University of Costa Rica and in other institutions. Through the years he has formed a deep and abiding interest in the people and their culture. Each year he returns to the country to spend time among his many Costa Rican friends and relatives – especially Mireya and her daughters, who are the subject of this book, and whose lives and dilemmas have inspired in the author wonder, deep sympathy and considerable concern.