Across A Hundred Mountains

One day, Adelina visits Diana in the hospital, shortly after Diana attempted to kill herself. Diana says to Adelina, “‘What do you know about pain? You don’t know what it’s like to be responsible for a child’s death. You don’t know what it’s like for me when night comes, when my body yearns for rest and my guilty conscience can’t let it sleep’” (221), which makes Adelina cry. Adelina decides to tell Diana her story.

When Juana gets back to the apartment after failing to cross the border, the other women tell Juana that Gerardo killed Adelina. Juana steals Adelina’s birth certificate from her drawer and decides to assume Adelina’s identity in order to travel to the United States.

After getting off the bus in her mother’s village, Adelina, whom the reader now knows is Juana, takes a taxi to the place where her family’s shack once stood, but where a brick and concrete house now stands in its place. Adelina observes, “This was the house her father had once dreamed of” (226). Sandra, Doña Martina’s granddaughter, now lives in the house. Sandra welcomes Adelina and tells her that her mother is dying in the prison’s clinic.

Adelina takes a walk around the village and runs into the young man from the bus and Doña Matilde, Don Elías’s husband. The man introduces himself as José Alberto and Doña Matilde as his mother, but Adelina secretly knows he is her baby brother, Miguel.

Adelina visits her mother at the prison’s clinic. Amá has trouble believing it is really her daughter and is still waiting for her husband to return home to her. Adelina decides not to show Apá’s ashes to Amá.

Back at Sandra’s house, Adelina tells Sandra that she wants to tell José Alberto who he really is, but Sandra advises Adelina against it, explaining, “‘If you do this out of revenge, be aware that you’ll hurt not only Matilde but your brother and yourself, as well’” (236). Nevertheless, Adelina visits José Alberto and convinces him to come see Amá, even though she doesn’t explain why. However, Amá believes José Alberto to be Apá, finally returning to her. José Alberto allows Amá to think he is really Apá.

The next morning, Adelina learns that Amá died of a heart attack that night. José Alberto Adelina, and Adelina tells José Alberto her plan to deposit her parents’ ashes in the ocean. José Alberto insists on coming with Adelina. Adelina and José Alberto stay at a hotel by the ocean, where José Alberto tells Adelina that he knows he is her brother. One time, when José Alberto was young, his family had a maid named Antonia who accidentally called him Miguel. José Alberto’s family fired the maid, but José Alberto never forgot. After meeting Amá, José Alberto went to look for Antonia who told him the truth. Adelina remembers Antonia, her godmother, who stopped speaking to Amá when Amá became sexually involved with Don Elías. The next day, as brother and sister, Adelina and José Alberto throw Amá and Apá’s ashes into the ocean. Adelina decides she will call Sebastian, tell him the truth about her past, and give their relationship another chance.