37 pages • 1 hour read
Reyna GrandeAcross A Hundred Mountains
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 63-88Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 63-88 Summary
As Adelina travels by bus from Mexico City to her hometown, she remembers how she first met Dr. Luna. Adelina works as a therapist at a shelter for battered women in Los Angeles. One of the women from the shelter, Laura, had recently returned to her husband, only to end up in the hospital. Adelina visited Laura at the hospital, where she met Dr. Luna. Later, she saw Dr. Luna again, when he came to check on Laura at the shelter. As she left Dr. Luna alone with Laura, “she walked out of the room, her heart pounding” (88).
With no money, Juana is forced to rummage through garbage to find food for herself and Amá. One day, Don Elías shows up again with two “judiciales” (67) in black uniforms. The “judiciales” have come to take Amá to prison for not paying back her debt. Don Elías again says to Amá, “‘We can make other arrangements […] Can’t we?’” (68). Amá reluctantly accepts Don Elías’s offer. The next day, Don Elías returns “to collect his first payment” (69). Amá orders Juana to leave the shack, but Juana peeks through the cracks in the wall and “saw something that made her eyes widen with disgust” (73).
The people in Juana’s community begin to mock Amá for her sexual relationship with Don Elías. They accuse her of cheating on her husband, and of having an affair with a married man whose wife can’t bear children. One day, Juana returns home to find Amá destroying the set of dishes she and Apá received when they were married. Juana manages to stop her mother and finally “stood in front of her mother holding on to the last plate, the only plate left of her inheritance” (75).
Amá becomes pregnant. Seven and a half months after Don Elías started visiting the shack, Amá goes into labor. Juana runs to get Doña Martina, the midwife, and helps her deliver Amá’s baby. After a difficult night, Amá delivers a baby boy. Don Elías comes by later that day to see the baby. Amá doesn’t want to let him near the baby at first, but Don Elías reminds her who paid for all the food that kept her strong during the pregnancy. Juana, who believed that the food was gifts from Doña Martina or Antonia, her godmother, is furious.
Don Elías goes out and gets drunk that night, and brags to everyone about his newborn son. The next morning, Juana hears everyone gossiping about Amá, accusing her of having a baby with a married man.
Pages 63-88 Analysis
As a child, Juana does not understand everything about the relationship between Don Elías and her mother, Amá. When Don Elías first offers to make “other arrangements” with Amá to help her repay her debt, Juana does not understand what this means. It’s only after Juana peeks through the cracks in the shack’s wall that she realizes Don Elías is raping Amá. Juana’s limited understanding of her mother’s situation helps characterize Juana as a child and allows the reader to witness her grow up and develop as a character over the course of the novel, as Juana learns more about the world around her.
The mountains are described frequently in the story and used to represent Juana’s hope that her father will one day return. When Juana looks out across “the mountains silhouetted against the orange-streaked sky,” she “thought about her father and wondered what he was doing” (66). Later, she stands in the river and “remember[s] that the river snaked around to the other side of the mountains. Could it take her there, to the other side, to find Apá?” (70). Finally, Juana looks toward the mountains again and remembers that “[t]hose were the mountains Apá had pointed at and said he would be on the other side of” (78). Throughout the text, the mountains are a symbol used to represent Juana’s hope, and serve as a reminder to Juana that her father promised to one day return to his family.
Another symbol that returns in these pages is the set of dishes that were a gift to Apá and Amá on their wedding day, and that were meant to be Juana’s inheritance. One day, after Don Elías has begun visiting the shack, Juana returns home to find her mother destroying the dishes. For Amá, this represents that she has lost hope in Apá and in their marriage. Amá has also lost hope in ever having a better life, as she is destroying the item that was at one point one of the most valuable things the family owned. However, Juana manages to save one plate, “the only plate left of her inheritance” (75). This represents that Juana is still hopeful, even as she watches her mother become weaker and weaker.
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