Alicia

Alicia is a young Isabo girl around 12 or 13 years of age (no exact ages are given for any of the characters in the novel) who lives in the tiny village of Poincushmana. The village sits along the Paro River in the Amazon jungle of Peru. Alicia is smart, generous, and kind although at the start of the novel she is timid, and believes that she is ugly because she is not short and fat like her beautiful best friend, Elena. Alicia's father has promised her to the same man who is married to her older sister, but he lives downriver and Alicia still lives with her mother, younger brother Marco, and another infant brother. Throughout the story Alicia says that she has no husband, and does not believe that she is ready to stop being a child yet and become a wife. Early in the novel Alicia adopts...