By: Christena
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Storms of the Heart Are Just As Bad as Hurricanes – My Book Review

STORMS OF MALHADO
by
MARIA ELENA SANDOVICI
Genre: Historical Fiction / Ghosts
Publisher: Independently Published
Date of Publication: March 26, 2020
Number of Pages: 252

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Galveston Island, Texas, September 2008 Katie doesn’t believe in ghosts. And she certainly doesn’t believe the rumors that her family’s home is haunted, despite its tragic history: two young women who lived there in different eras died in hurricanes—one during Hurricane Carla in 1961, one during the Great Storm of 1900, the greatest natural disaster to befall the United States. But that was the past, a fact Katie reminds herself of when she returns to Galveston to await Hurricane Ike with her parents and boyfriend in her family’s Broadway mansion, hoping to rekindle her flailing relationship.

While Katie is not afraid of the ghost stories she’s heard, she is afraid of the monster storm approaching. As even die-hard Islanders evacuate, her fears grow—fear of the looming hurricane, fear that she’s talentless as a painter, fear that her relationship with her boyfriend is already over. As Katie struggles against her fears, the past whispers to her of the women who died there and the haunting similarities they share with Katie’s own life. 


Through three different timelines, Storms of Malhado weaves a story of Galveston’s past, underscoring its danger and isolation, as well as its remarkable resilience, and its capacity for both nostalgia and reinvention. Full of contradictions, at once insular and open to the world, Galveston Island is as much a character of the novel as Katie, Suzanne, Betty, their lovers, and their confidantes.
 
PRAISE FOR STORMS OF MALHADO:


“Taking place entirely on a beautifully moody Galveston Island, Ms. Sandovici weaves three simultaneous stories with ease. With a timeless tale, ethereal language, and complicated characters, readers will be entranced by this modern ghost story. How many times can the past repeat itself? How do we recognize people through generations? The author tackles this topic amid a backdrop of violent nature and intangible dreamscapes.” 
—Courtney Brandt, author of The Queen of England: Coronation, Grand Tour, Ascension

”Three women, three great storms, and one house, haunted by forbidden love and frustrated ambition. Get ready to be swept away by Sandovici’s foray into Galveston Island’s tempestuous history in this tale of lives intertwined across time.”
—Donna Dechen Birdwell, author of Not Knowing

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Storms of the Heart Are Just As Bad as Hurricanes  –  My Book Review

“….She could look at the ships forever. She could get lost imagining the wares they carried, trying to guess their places of origin, the shades and colors of other waters they’d encountered on their way to the brownish hues of Galveston Bay….”

I swear I kept thinking the ocean was calling to me during my reading of Storms of Malhado by Maria Elena Sandovici.

So what is Malhado? Within the book, there is mention of it just once that I found. What this reference is the debatable name of Galveston Island from historical times. Malhado Island or Isle of Misfortune known as current-day Galveston Island was the name applied by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca to an island off the Texas coast where he shipwrecked in November 1528. The location of this landform has often been the subject of heated debate since the 1920s. You can read more about that here:

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/rrm01

Back to the book at hand. This is the third book I have read by Elena. She’s refined her writing appreciably with the Storms of Malhado. I was immersed with every chapter and sensed so much of Galveston from the feel of the sand to the smells of the oleanders, to those grackles squawks, to the often oppressive heat.

While pitched as a ghost story it falls into the realm of a reincarnation story. The story is woven around three women who live in different decades and all are experiencing forbidden love. The story entwines the stories of these women in 1900, 1961, and 2008 which are in turn during significant hurricane and storm years for Galveston.

Women have romantic storms of the heart, especially Katie, Betty, and Suzanne in this story. The Storms of Malhado conveys each of these woman’s journeys during their unsettled love to finding acceptance for many aspects of their lives. Elena’s writing is expressive and poetic with her storytelling.

I love it when authors spark me to do some research of my own. And Elena did a fantastic job at making me look into the history of the Weather Bureau or National Weather Service. I literally had no clue about the intensive history at monitoring our weather dating back to 1849. You can read more about that history here:

https://www.weather.gov/timeline

This book is for all the women who have ridden in a romantic storm of their own like they have just been through a hurricane. And, it gives you hope that maybe reincarnation can be possible or is possible. Most importantly the Storms of Malhado will make the perfect beach read when we get back to normal.

Lastly, there are horses in the story.

 

Maria Elena Sandovici is a full-time writer, artist, and gallery owner living in Houston, Texas. After obtaining a Ph.D. in political science from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2005, her curiosity led her to Texas, where she taught at Lamar University for fourteen years. She felt attracted to Galveston Island from her first visit and lived there part-time for three years before her artistic career took her to Houston. 

 
Sandovici is a 2008 graduate of John Ross Palmer’s Escapist Mentorship Program, a program that teaches artists business skills. She resigned from her tenured academic position in December 2018 and opened her own private gallery space. Her previous works of fiction are Dogs with Bagels, Stray Dogs and Lonely Beaches, Lost Path to Solitude, The Adventures of Miss Vulpe, and Lone Wolf. She is also the author of Stop and Smell the Garbage, a volume of poetry in the voice of her dog, Holly Golightly. You can follow her daily adventures on her blog HaveWatercolorsWillTravel.blog.

 

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