Under the Salvadoran Sun is about a mature woman's search for love and meaning in the embrace of post civil war El Salvador. It is love, sex and altruism in the hot and sensual arms of Central America. By a chance meeting with her former lover, Angela, an artist and widow from Seattle, is drawn into assisting him at a Salvadoran orphanage, supervised by an irreverent nun. More is at stake for Angela when she has to confront her daughters' discovery of her past transgression. As the story unfolds, Angela faces the complex world of Salvadoran gangs, threatening to entrap the young boys of the orphanage and secrets that jeopardize her relationship with her lover, Liam. A true journey of the heart begins, when Liam convinces Angela to help him get their mutual friends, a Salvadoran mother and young daughter to El Norte, where they hope to join the husband and father, an undocumented worker in Central California. The journey north is dangerous and adventure-packed, as they meet up with Guatemalan bandidos, a curandero(healer) and friends in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. As they near the border they learn a startling fact about the father bringing the novel to a bittersweet surprise ending. Filled with familial conflict, questions of faith, self-interest and true humanitarianism, the story confronts the issue of immigration without proselytizing a solution. The reader can see many sides of the issue through coming to know more about El Salvador and its people and history.
