While Fiesta Plans Brew, Here’s the Story Behind a Couple of Saint Down’s Illustrations
I see the celebration of the launch of my dad’s book like a wedding. A couple of weddings take place in The Music of Pedro and it was fun to pick my dad’s brain about the customs and foods that might have been featured as I wrote these scenes. Our own family weddings always emphasized food, piñatas, and dancing, but none of us ever practiced primer desayuno or el muertito. Our own family brides never laid bouquets at the feet of a Virgin Mary statue. In this way the book highlights a deeper dive into the culture than the past guests of Cuevas weddings experienced.
The fiesta for the launch of The Music of Pedro will be a journey into the book, which is why I was set on Highland Gardens as the venue. I want our guests to take a trip from Utah Valley in November to the tropics of a greenhouse, something like the setting of our story: Pivámoc, Jalisco. The noon reading and Q&A will be free, but expect an affordable cover charge for the evening festivities. Think of it like a cheap date night and put it on your calendars! (More details to come!)
For now, I want to share a couple more illustrations that Saint Down finished for the book and give some context about their meaning and creation.
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Pedro is raised by a scholar who has lived her life in seclusion before his adoption. She agrees to raise him with the intention to craft him into something extraordinary. By the time he’s three years old she decides he will be a concert violinist. For the rest of his life into adulthood, when he isn’t practicing the violin, he’s studying medicine, and when he isn’t doing either, he’s drawing. And on Sundays he swims in El Rio de Sierpe.
Eventually Pedro finds himself alone and bereft except for a violin, three hundred miles from a destination he craves like salvation. This image captures his lonely exhaustion in the midst of his journey. My brother asked me to send him a picture of my fiancé from behind wearing a loose shirt and walking away.
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As a young man, Pedro develops a blasphemous love for a nun. Separated from her by fate and circumstance, he puts his pencil to paper to imagine her without coif and veil. He decides that if they’re never meant to be together, he at the very least will never forget her face.
This illustration of Sister Margarita, drawn as if by Pedro’s own hand, is inspired by my grandma Emilia Pizano Cuevas:
The book is dedicated to her, a beautiful, fierce woman who loved her family with doting, untiring dedication.
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So I uploaded the manuscript PDF to Amazon KDP just last week and got my proof this weekend! It’s a trip to finally hold the product of three years of work in my hands. Now to mark it up with all the things to fix for the final version.
Click here to read more about the making of The Music of Pedro, and subscribe to my blog to make sure you don’t miss any updates about the launch!
Reb
Reb recently discovered the convenience of eating Flavor Blasted Goldfish with chopsticks. Her essay "When the Ground Shakes," and poem "jicama" are featured in the anthology Blossom as the Cliffrose: Mormon Legacies and the Beckoning Wild by Torrey House Press. Other work by Reb has been featured in UVU's Touchstones; the queer-lit journal peculiar, for which she is now a copy-editor; Tule Review, a publication of the Sacramento Poetry Center. She was one of 60 finalists in the international Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2016 competition for her poem "Dry Erase."
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