Eartheater: A Novel

Electrifying & provocative, visceral & profound, a powerful literary debut novel about a young woman whose compulsion to eat earth gives her visions of murdered & missing people—an imaginative synthesis of mystery & magical realism that explores the dark tragedies of ordinary lives.

Set in an unnamed slum in contemporary Argentina, Eartheater is the story of a young woman who finds herself drawn to eating the earth—a compulsion that gives her visions of broken & lost lives. With her first taste of dirt, she learns the horrifying truth of her mother’s death. Disturbed by what she witnesses, the woman keeps her visions to herself. But when Eartheater begins an unlikely relationship with a withdrawn police officer, word of her ability begins to spread, & soon desperate members of her community beg for her help, anxious to uncover the truth about their own loved ones. 

Surreal & haunting, spare yet complex, Eartheater is a dark, emotionally resonant tale told from a feminist perspective that brilliantly explores the stories of those left behind—the women enduring the pain of uncertainty, whose lives have been shaped by violence & loss.

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Dolores Reyes was born in Buenos Aires in 1978. She is a teacher, feminist, activist, & the mother of seven children. She studied classical literature at the University of Buenos Aires. Eartheater is her first novel. 

Julia Sanches translates works from Portuguese, Spanish, & Catalan into English. She is a founding member of Cedilla & Co., a collective of translators committed to making international voices heard in English, & chair of the Translators Group of the Authors Guild. Her other translations include Boulder by Eva Balthasar & Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver. Her website describes her translations as concise, readable & idiomatic, & the idiomatic certainly proved true with Andrea Abreu’s Dogs of Summer.