Trinity Sight, Jennifer Givhan
Trinity Sight, Jennifer Givhan
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Trinity Sight
A Novel

Author: Jennifer Givhan

Narrator: January LaVoy

Unabridged: 10 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2019


Synopsis

Winner of the 2020 Southwest Book Award“Our people are survivors,” Calliope’s great-grandmother once told her of their Puebloan roots—could Bisabuela’s ancient myths be true?Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared—or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors, confronting violent inhabitants, in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. The impossible suddenly real, Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied if she wants to survive and deliver her unborn babies into this uncertain new world.Rooted in indigenous oral-history traditions and contemporary apocalypse fiction, Trinity Sight asks readers to consider science versus faith and personal identity versus ancestral connection. Lyrically written and utterly original, Trinity Sight brings readers to the precipice of the end-of-times and the hope for redemption.

About Jennifer Givhan

Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellow, is a Mexican American writer and activist from the Southwestern desert. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections and her honors include the Frost Place Latinx Scholarship, the New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize chosen by Tyehimba Jess, and others. She is the author of the novels Trinity Sight, a nominee for the 2019 Reading the West Book Award in Adult Fiction, and Jubilee. Givhan holds a master’s degree in English from California State University Fullerton and an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and she can be found discussing feminist motherhood at JenniferGivhan.com as well as on Facebook and Twitter @JennGivhan.

About January LaVoy

January LaVoy, winner of numerous awards for narration, was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. She is an American actress best known for her character Noelle Ortiz on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. In addition to working extensively in narration and television, including roles on Law & Order and All My Children, she has worked on and off Broadway as well as in regional theater.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Megan on January 16, 2020

This beautiful book is like nothing I’ve ever read, but if I had to compare it to something, I’d say it’s THE LEFTOVERS meets GODS OF JADE AND SHADOW. Calliope Santiago, an anthropologist and college professor, sees a “shock of light” on her drive home, passes out, and when she awakes, it appears as......more

Goodreads review by Joseph Cardillo on February 02, 2020

The first novel I've read in years that I simply couldn't put down. Trinity Sight weaves together two genres that are rarely combined. The deep, resonance of Chican(a)(o)(x) and Indigenous and Puebloan storytelling and language meet dystopian sci-fi in a narrative that feels like it truly could be t......more

Goodreads review by Becky on May 24, 2020

Givhan is a Mexican American poet with family ties to the Laguna Pueblo in West-Central New Mexico and in this, her debut novel, she draws heavily on Indigenous storytelling, especially of the Zuni people. This dystopian sci-fi (questionably labeled as Magical Realism) features a pregnant Mexican Am......more

Goodreads review by Suzanne on September 24, 2019

Trinity Sight by Jennifer Givhan is a breathtakingly beautiful story that touched me to my core. Jennifer is a master at weaving our ancient stories, the ones handed down by our great grandmothers, with more recent apocalyptic historical events and with the current modern-day world. Trinity Sight ke......more

Goodreads review by Molly on January 08, 2020

This book deals with climate change in a compelling and fresh way, exploring the intersection between ancient intuitive wisdom and contemporary academic intellectual distance. It's a post-apocalyptic narrative that feels somehow hopeful; there's a longing in it for a humanity that pays attention, an......more


Quotes

Trinity Sight, poet Jennifer Givhan’s debut novel, is more than a dystopian road trip. Lyrical language and indigenous traditions elevate it into a nuanced examination of faith in the face of cataclysm…This is an original, emotional story written by a master of imaginative language.” Shelf Awareness

“January Lavoy narrates a powerful dystopian saga…LaVoy perfectly captures the terrible cascade of emotions Calliope experiences…[and] wholly embodies the agonizing despair experienced by several characters…LaVoy’s meticulous attention to detail shows in the care with which she voices all of the survivors Calliope surrounds herself with, each a different age and ethnicity, most with terrible psychological burdens, but all fiercely determined to persist. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“A vivid, thought-provoking story that feels both intensely real and sublimely magical. I didn’t realize how much I was craving a completely original story like this one!” Mia Sheridan, New York Times bestselling author

“A rocket-fueled, indigenous-culture inspired Mad Max—what a ride! Jennifer Givhan drives us through a hellish vision of our country’s future by way of our ancestors’ past. Fierce, wrenching, and written with a poet’s eye for transformation and grace, inside this page-turner are the lessons the land may soon teach us. We ignore this ‘fiction’ at our peril.” Brando Skyhorse, author of The Madonnas of Echo Park and Take This Man

“There’s a lot to love about Trinity Sight, a dense debut novel packed with Native stories and myths, conceived and plotted as carefully as a nationwide conference, full of organic stakes and interesting characters…Trinity Sight is a mature and deep-thinking book, and a surprisingly subtle and layered work of literature for a first novel.…Watch Givhan carefully: she’s got chops, and a flair for combining unusual genre elements.” Katharine Coldiron, Locus

“A unique take on dystopian fiction, weaving the culture of Pueblo peoples into an adventurous, apocalyptic page-turner. Lyrical writing and exceptional plotting make this own voices novel highly recommended.” Booklist (starred review)

“Brace yourself: The end of the world is coming. Or is it? A multilayered, Indigenous-inflected version of the apocalypse that resists predictability…Givhan’s themes are complex and occasionally compete with the twists and turns of the plot for a reader’s attention. Still, texture and nuance are rare among disaster narratives and are welcome here. A testament to the strength of women and girls with a side of philosophy, myth, and metaphysics.” Kirkus Reviews

“Poet Givhan blends Puebloan, Zuni, and Mexican American cultures in this searing postapocalyptic rumination on motherhood, genocide, and environmentalism…This magical realist tale reveres the power of nature, exploring what could happen if Earth punished humankind for the atrocities committed against it. Poetry imbues every page with power and truth, and the intense plot is propelled by fully realized characters and a majestically primal setting. This harrowing debut with Southwestern sensibility depicts the dangers of destroying our planet and questions whether mythology is an apt term to describe Indigenous beliefs.” Library Journal

“Calliope’s mysterious, bittersweet journey is riveting, shocking, and full of heart.” Lynn Hightower, author of The Piper

Trinity Sight sucked me in, spun me around, and blew me away. This riveting tale set in a postapocalyptic wasteland is brimming with otherworldly adversaries who hold deadly grudges and mesmerizing travel companions who might prove to be just as dangerous.” Nicky Drayden, author of The Prey of Gods


Awards

  • Publishers Weekly Pick
  • Library Journal Editor’s Pick
  • An i09 Pick
  • GoodReads Pick
  • Tor.com Reviewers' Choice
  • Literary Hub Pick
  • Booklist Pick
  • High Country News Pick
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • BookRiot Pick
  • Reading the West Book Award
  • Southwest Book Award
  • New Mexico--Arizona Book Award