The Sound of Music

To live in Guayaquil, Ecuador is to be at the mercy of the tectonic plates under your feet. Nicole and Noa, the young women at the heart of Mónica Ojeda’s latest novel, Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun, run away from home on the day that a nearby volcanic eruption covers their city in ash. The friends are not afraid –– they’ve weathered more than a dozen such events –– but they take the eruption as affirmation that nature is calling them away.