1920's Brazil - remote mountainous region: Two sisters, Emília and Luzia dos Santos, parent-less, have just moved in to live with their seamstress aunt. The aunt teaches them the ways of the trade. Emilia and Luzia are as different as day and night. Beautiful Emília dreams of leaving the small provincial town, reads the fashion/beauty magazine, and designs her own clothing (often to the ridicule of the town's residents. Tall, independent Luzia, with a damaged arm from a childhood accident, has never let it stop her from becoming a confident seamstress. She too has dreams even though she knows her damaged arm prevents her from becoming a viable marriageable interest.

The two sister's paths separate though when a group of cangaceiros (bandits), led by the infamous Hawk, converge on the town and take Luzia with them. Emília finds her escape through a hasty marriage to a wealthy doctor's son and moves to the city of Recife. Luzia becomes a well-known cangaceiro nicknamed The Seamstress and Emília becomes a wealthy socialite. However, girlhood dreams are never the same in reality. Emília has to hid her past and association with Luzia and must deal with high society prejudices and a distant husband with a secret. Luzia finds that every day life as a cangaceiro is not as thrilling as one might think. Communication between the sisters is non-existent and the two rely on clipping newspaper stories to keep in touch.

The novel alternates between each sister's viewpoint. At the beginning I loved Luzia's voice and was always impatient to get through Emília's side to get back to Luzia. I just related more to Luzia over Emília's fashionable frippery. But as the story progressed, I fell for Emília's plight and just loved how she evolved. I have to say it did remind me of Isabel Allende but Frances de Pontes Peebles has a voice all her own. It is just vivid and beautiful. Be aware that while the Hawk's group of cangaceiro's often seem like Brazil's Robin Hood or Zorro...there are gruesome atrocities committed as well.

I LOVED this book. I couldn't put it down. I loved Luzia. I love the scenes between Luzia and the Hawk. And Emília evolution from a selfish materialistic girl into the woman in Recife is just beautiful and often heart wrenching to read. Frances de Pontes Peebles depicted the Brazilian landscape and scenes so well that I almost felt like I was watching it. I can still picture in my mind the newspaper clipping and photo depicting the elusive Hawk and Seamstress' band of cangaceiros. The history of the Brazilian land and people is fascinating and I loved finding a book that depicted this unfamiliar time period.

I also stumbled across Frances de Pontes Peebles blog The Art of Waiting and I am addicted. You should check it out. There's an section at the end of the paperback copy that I have which has an interview with Frances regarding her research and travels while writing The Seamstress. She actually went into the remote regions and talked with people in the very places she was writing about. No wonder the imagery is so vivid! And Frances' own ancestral history also takes a part in this story. I want her to write a whole other book/memoir depicting her adventures in writing and researching this book. ( )

The parallel stories of two orphaned sisters, brought up by their aunt in the Brazilian countryside in the 1920s, and trained as seamstresses. Emilia dreams of falling in love and escaping to the glamorous city, while Luzia – left with a deformed arm, after a childhood accident – has a more pessimistic attitude towards her own future.

Their paths diverge when Luzia is abducted by bandits, and Emilia meets a man who offers to marry her, and take her away to the city. Neither necessarily has the life that they had imagined for themselves. Now living very different lives, the sisters nevertheless continue to draw upon the lessons and metaphors of sewing as they describe the way in which their lives continue to develop.

I liked the little cultural details, the depiction of the relationship between the two sisters, and the way in which their shared upbringing influenced their subsequent lives.

When the market in the US crashes, the drought worsens, and the country falls in civil war, the bandits seemed to become more and more vicious. The story started dragging for me at this point, and I lost some of the earlier enthusiasm I had had for it. ( )

Emilia and Luzia are two young sisters being raised by their Aunt Sofia, in the backcountry of Brazil, since both of their parents have passed away. Their aunt has taught them to sew and they both sew beautifully.

Emilia is the older sister and she has romantic longings. She dreams of falling in love and enjoying society in the big city with her husband.

The younger sister, Luzia, dreams of escape too. As a young girl, Luzia falls from a mango tree and when her arm doesn’t heal right, she is dubbed “Victrola” by everyone in town, even the priest. She longs to get away from the constant teasing.

Their lives change forever when bandits invade their town and take Luzia with them upon their escape. Aunt Sofia dies shortly thereafter and Emilia submits to a loveless marriage since it wouldn’t look right for her to live on her own.

The sisters live very different lives – one as a bandit and one as a member of a wealthy, well-respected family in the city – yet their lives and their love for each other remain forever entwined.

The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles started a little slow for me, but I think that was more a reflection of some things that were going on in my life, rather than of the book itself, because once I got into the book, I didn’t want to put it down. The story is told from the point of view of Luzia and Emilia in alternating chapters, and the author did a wonderful job of showing how the same event affected each sister. The sisters are very different and yet so similar and I could relate to them both. The character development and storyline in this book are fantastic! This book is set in the late 1920’s to mid 1930’s and it is historical fiction at its best! It is obviously very well researched and I found the historical details to be fascinating. The Seamstress is the author’s first novel and I sincerely hope she is busy working on another one. ( )

a slow start to a powerdful and well written ending. A really good read!

Some of the best aspects of reading fiction are visiting places you may never otherwise see and providing a glimpse of what it might be like to live in a different time in history. The Seamstress, which takes place mainly between Taquaritinga and Recife, Brazil during the late 1920s and early 1930s, is an engaging novel that provides the opportunity for both. It tells the story of Emilia and Luzia dos Santos, orphaned sisters who are raised by their Aunt Sofia, the seamstress for the community’s Colonel. The sisters, while very different people, both find peace, creative release, and ultimately their destinies in sewing.

Emilia dos Santos is the oldest sister, and she has high aspirations for her life. She is not content to remain forever in Taquaritinga, a small interior town whose prospects do not allow her, despite her charm, the ability to rise above her warm, yet meager existence. Her refusal to consider the many bachelors who have asked Aunt Sofia for her hand has given her a reputation for being a young woman who thinks too highly of herself, but she finds her escape in her collection of Fon Fon magazines, which provide patterns for the latest fashions along with guidance on being a lady and short stories about gentlemen and romance. What gives her hope is marrying a gentleman and moving to Recife, where life is beautiful and full of opportunity.

Luzia dos Santos is quite the opposite from her sister. She has no interest at all in her sister’s fashion magazines or fantasies of Recife. As a young child she fell from a tree and broke her arm. Because of the inadequate medical care she received, her arm is permanently bent at a 90 degree angle. Her disability makes ends all prospects of marriage for her and she becomes somewhat of an outcast in Taquaritinga, earning herself the knickname Victrola because her arm resembled the arm of the popular record player. Unlike Emilia, Luzia rebels against society and its ways. She fights every way she can because she sees no real future for herself until The Hawk and his band of cangaceiros invade Taquaritinga looking for water during the dry season.

Brazil in the early part of the 20th century was a corrupt and harsh place to live, especially outside of the large cities surrounding the coast. There was no fully authoritative centralized government, so the wealthy landowners, or Colonels, ruled their territory as they saw fit. The ease of life in the interior portions of the country was very much dependent upon the weather and the life experience of the current Colonel. As many of them were prone to be tyrants, this gave rise to the cangacos, groups of bandits who roamed throughout the countryside as nomads in search of food, money and, above all else, revenge against the Colonels and gentry. Emilia and Luzia came of age at a time when a powerful leader to over power in the central government through revolution and began to take power away from the Colonels. This change in political climate brought reforms, but also chaos into the country. As much as it is about the vastly different lives Emilia and Luzia led, The Seamstress tells the story of how the relationship between coastal and interior Brazil changed this new government took hold of the country.

Emilia and Luzia found that getting what they wanted always comes at a price. Because of their background, they are never fully welcomed in the communities they joined. What kept them from alienation and made them whole was the only things they took with them from Taquaritinga, their survival skills and their passion for sewing. When they find themselves at odds in the new political climate, will their bond be enough to save them?

The author really brings to life both the environmental harshness of the arid Brazilian countryside and the political and social harshness of Recife. While the cangaceiros were fighting to stay relevant in an age when the Colonels were losing stature and authority, the upper class in Recife were fighting to rid the country of the terror created by these random acts of violence and retribution. The fear felt by the establishment opened the door to use phrenology to catalog criminals in order to predict who will become harmful to the state. It was a fascinating look at a developing Latin American country.

The Seamstress expertly blends the threads of family, culture, crime, punishment, sin and redemption into a beautiful canvas that highlights both an exotic land and an intriguing time in Latin American history. While it took me a while to read this book, there isn’t any part that felt unnecessary or should have otherwise not been included. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel. I grew to care deeply for Emilia and Luzia and was interested in their world. I hope to learn more from Brazil and look forward to reading more from Frances De Pontes Peebles in the future. The story of these sisters and their country will stay with me for a long time to come.

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