"When the Ground Turns in its Sleep is a complex tale told in simple, lyrical language, on that more faithfully reports the sufferings of the Guatemalan people than does any United Nations document decrying this infamous period of history and its gross abuse of human rights."
- Martha Gies
Las Comadres, the Association of American Publishers and Borders have picked "When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep" for January 2009.
The Boston Authors Club has awarded "When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep" the 2008 Julia Warde Howe Book Prize. See past winners, finalists, and recommended books on the Boston Authors Club's website.
"This impressive début is narrated by Nítido Amán, a high-school teacher born in Guatemala but brought up in America. Reading about the atrocities of the nineteen-eighties warfare in his homeland, Amán returns there, in order, he says, “to fill the silences” left by his parents and by “the wide margins of the newspaper.” Arriving in 1993 in an isolated village near his parents’ birthplace, he is mistaken for the town’s new priest, and ... the stage is set for the dramatic unravelling of near and distant savageries."
Sylvia Sellers-García discusses "When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep" in an UpFront interview.
Sylvia Sellers-García speaks with reviewer and commentator Rick Kleffel about "When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep."
"There is nothing in this impressive first novel to suggest that the author is a UC Berkeley PhD candidate in Latin American history. While Sylvia Sellers-García demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of the region's history and literature (as well as a postmodern distrust of conventional narrative), her spare, graceful prose is anything but cerebral or academic... Part folk tale, part noir mystery, part meditation on the burden of history, this is a remarkable debut." -- Sheerly Avni
“FIRST NOVEL IS A BRILLIANT BEGINNING: Some first novels give the feeling of having grown in a chrysalis, only to emerge at the very height of readiness. Sylvia Sellers-García’s When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep is just that kind of novel… In what might be the book’s best asset, accomplished scholar and short-story writer Sellers-García evokes compassion as she describes historical events on the ground level.” – BookPage
“‘When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep’ … investigates the very nature and value of truth – a question that… comes off not as academic but as meaty and salient… A smart inflection in the searching-for-roots trope. History plays not as something to dig up, but something to be.” – San Francisco Chronicle
"After his father's death in 1993, Nítido Amán leaves Oregon, where their family has lived for years, for Guatemala, where he was born. His parents never spoke of their life in Guatemala, so he hopes to piece together their story, especially their reasons for leaving.
