Urania Cabral

While there are many characters in the Feast of the Goat, Urania is the one we follow most frequently, and it is her story that begins and ends the novel. A daughter of the high-ranking Trujilista Agustín Cabral, Urania flees the Dominican Republic with the aid of nuns at age 14, the same year Trujillo is killed. She leads the life of a highly accomplished lawyer. After attending Harvard, she worked at the World Bank and then at a Manhattan law firm, advising companies all over the world on the legal side of financial transaction. Thirty-five years later, she returns on a whim and confronts her aging father about his actions during the last year of the regime.

Despite this success, Urania is tormented by the horrors of Trujillo’s regime and the dictator’s rape of her as a young girl. The trauma of the violation...