So Far from God

Caridad is the second youngest and the most beautiful of the sisters. She marries her highschool sweetheart. After learning of his infidelity, she gets her sister Loca to perform an abortion and goes on to receive two more. After her breakup, she drinks heavily and sleeps with strangers from bars. One night, she is brutally attacked and left for dead on the side of the road. For the next year, she remains in Sofi’s house until she makes a “spontaneous recovery” (39). She realizes she has powers of prediction and moves into a trailer on doña Felicia’s property. Under doña Felicia’s guidance, “Caridad, who had become known as kind of a well, puta, went off to doña Felicia to become a curandera!” (135). 

One day, en route to the hot springs, Caridad comes upon a cave and ends up staying there for a year. She is discovered by Francisco and his friends and dubbed La Santita Armitaña. When she returns to Tome, her powers of prediction and healing increase. She also falls in love with Esmeralda, a woman she first saw at a Holy Friday pilgrimage and later at the hot springs. She keeps watch over Esmeralda but does not declare her love. She journeys to Sky City, the place of Esmeralda’s ancestors, and follows Esmeralda over the side of the mesa. When people search for their bodies, “there was nothing” (211). They are absorbed into the earth and protected by the Native deity Tsichtinako. Caridad is a woman who is emotionally and physically abused by the men in her community. However, she reverses this power dynamic by healing herself and healing others. In the end, she transcends death and goes back to the earth, not allowing the patriarchy to have the final word. 

La Loca is the youngest of Sofi’s daughters who dies at the age of three and is miraculously resurrected at her funeral. She may have been pronounced dead prematurely, but the novel leaves room for interpretation. From this point on, she is repulsed by human touch and refuses to leave her mother’s house: “She did not regret not being part of that society, never having found any use for it. At home she had everything she needed” (152). Because of her behavior, many in the community assume that she is mentally ill, but others believe in her miraculous powers. 

Like Caridad, Loca makes successful predictions and has the power of healing. After Fe and Caridad’s crises, Loca prays for them and they are miraculously restored. She spends time down at the acequia, where she is visited by La Llorona, who tells her of Esperanza’s death. As time goes on, Loca loses weight, becomes ill, and is diagnosed with AIDS. The novel never reveals how she contracts the disease. Despite the efforts of healers and doctors, Loca succumbs to her illness and passes away. She does, however, still return to earth to make visits and is deemed a saint and revered by the community: “People never really could figure out who La Loca protected and oversaw as a rule, or what she was good to pray to about. In general, though, it was considered a good idea to have a little statue of La Loca in your kitchen and to give one as a good luck gift to new brides and progressive grooms” (248). Loca is the only woman in the story who completely rejects the idea that one needs a man to be fulfilled. She remains separate from this discourse and is ultimately sanctified because of it.

Fe is the second youngest sister and works at a bank. She is supremely focused on her wedding to Tom and leading a normal life. When he breaks up with her, Fe screams all day long because she cannot believe that her perfectly-ordered life has been shattered. This screaming lasts for a full year. When she is restored, she goes back to her job at the bank as if nothing has happened and again focuses on getting married. She gets together with her cousin, Casey, and the two wed in a small ceremony. They buy a house and new furniture, and Fe is motivated to make more money. She starts working at Acme International, where the pay is better. This factory exposes her to toxic chemicals daily, and she develops nausea, headaches, and skin rashes. Despite these symptoms and the fact that she miscarries, Fe sticks with the job and advances through the ranks because she wants to keep earning money. Finally, Casey takes her to the doctor and Fe learns she has skin cancer, which she contracted before starting at the factory, and from the chemical exposure had cancer “all over the inside and there was no stopping it by then” (187). She dies at twenty-seven, one year after her marriage. Fe is the woman in the novel most beaten down by men and institutions. She cannot function emotionally and mentally after being dumped by Tom, and Acme International literally kills her. Fe is emblematic of all the women who have no chance of survival in a patriarchal world.

Esperanza is the eldest of the sisters and “always had a lot of spunk” (26). She obtains a B.A. in Chicano Studies and an M.A. in Communications. She is the most separated from the family and goes on to become a journalist and war correspondent. Her job sends her to Saudi Arabia where she goes missing and is eventually pronounced dead. She does, however, return to earth in “transparent” form, and “She was not only around to La Loca, appearing occasionally by the acequia, and to other people, like Sofia and doña Felicia in their dreams, but she really talked pretty plainly to Caridad” (205). Esperanza’s character demonstrates how women are able to advance themselves through education despite their origins. However, they are not all destined to succeed: powerful institutions still hold the upper hand and have the ability to destroy a strong woman. 

Doña Felicia, like Sofi, is a woman who has undergone many hardships but who nevertheless perseveres without the help of a man. She is the town’s curandera, offering remedies for emotional, spiritual and physical ailments. After Caridad’s cure, she takes her under her wing and instructs her in the way of healing. She is also an educated woman, speaking English, Spanish, and French. Though she at first rejects Catholicism, she comes to see that folk-healing and Catholicism can exist side-by-side. In this way, she embodies the culturalmelding of the novel. She is also a woman who has reversed the patriarchal power dynamics through her healing. 

Domingo embodies a type of man who gains power merely from his gender, rather than through merit. He meets the fourteen-year-old Sofia at a dance and, “Without even bothering to get permission from her father, that brazen young man with a charlatan’s black mustache and spit-shined boots came right up to her” (106).The two marry, but Domingo’s gambling is so extreme that Sofi tells him to leave the farm and the young family. He returns twenty years later and takes up residence again with the family, still fixated on gambling. When he gambles away the deed to the family farm, Sofia divorces him and sends him to live in the adobe he built for Caridad. Domingo is someone who complicates the lives of his wife and children and ultimately risks their economic and emotional security.