The Cemetery of Untold Stories

In The Cemetery of Untold Stories (2024), author Julia Alvarez raises questions about the power of storytelling and examines whose stories should or shouldn’t be told. The novel follows the life of Alma Cruz, a successful Dominican American writer, in the waning years of her career. When Alma inherits a plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she decides to turn it into a cemetery for the stories she has left unfinished. However, the characters in those stories take on lives of their own, telling their tales to each other and to any living being who is willing to listen.

This study guide refers to the 2024 Kindle Edition by Algonquin Books.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide discuss racism, the sexual assault of a child, child loss, death by suicide, and anti-gay bias.

Plot Summary

In the early days of Alma Cruz’s writing career, a more successful writer-friend serves as her mentor. Alma garners more success over the years, achieving tenure at a university and buying a house in Vermont. However, some of her writing angers her mother, who considers her fictionalized presentation of family life to be nothing but lies. The writer-friend suggests that Alma publish under the pseudonym of Scheherazade, the narrator of the stories in Arabian Nights, to tell her stories without upsetting her family. The writer-friend goes on to travel the world in pursuit of inspiration to complete a story idea that has preoccupied her for years, and her behavior becomes increasingly erratic. She wants Alma to finish the story for her if she dies before she can finish it herself. When the friend eventually dies, Alma speculates that her friend’s untold story caused the mental health crisis that ultimately led to her death.

After Alma’s mother dies, Alma and her sisters Piedad and Consuelo agree to bring their father, Dr. Manuel Cruz, to the United States from the Dominican Republic (DR). He has never been forthcoming about his past. Although he sometimes calls out the name of Tatica, he refuses to explain who she is, even in the later stages of his dementia. After he dies, Alma has a dream in which her writer-friend tells her to relinquish her unwritten stories before they kill her. Alma resigns from the university and informs her agent that she is closing out her career. She regrets that she never finished the book about her father or the one about Bienvenida, the ex-wife of the brutal Dominican dictator Trujillo.

Martillo, the family’s attorney, tells the four sisters that their father has left them several parcels of land in the DR, and Alma claims the largest and least valuable parcel and creates a cemetery in which to bury her untold stories. She hires a Dominican artist named Brava to create markers for each story’s burial plot. People are only allowed to enter the cemetery if they can tell a good story. The first person to gain entry is a middle-aged woman named Filomena, an illiterate caretaker. Eventually, Alma enlists her help with burning and burying the untold stories. However, two of Alma’s stories fail to catch fire: her father’s story and Bienvenida’s. For these stories, the women dig two graves. Filomena dedicates the first grave to el Barón, the deity of graves.

The narrative shifts back in time to tell Filomena’s life story. When she was a young girl, Filomena grew up poor with her older sister Perla and their often-violent father. When he died, Perla told Filomena that their mother hadn’t died; she had run away to Santiago. When Perla met a charming and somewhat wealthy man named Tesoro, he convinced them to move into his parents’ house. When Tesoro’s father learned that Perla was pregnant with Tesoro’s son, he insisted that they marry. During Perla’s pregnancy, Tesoro sexually assaulted the 13-year-old Filomena. Tesoro then went to New York and arranged for Perla to follow him. After a few years, they brought their son Pepito to New York with them, devastating Filomena. In a desperate attempt to keep Pepito with her, she told Perla about Tesoro’s act of sexual assault, but the plan backfired; Perla never wanted to speak to her again, and Pepito was gone from her life as well. Tesoro’s sisters hired Filomena to take care of their elderly mother, who had dementia. After the old woman died, Filomena was free to accept Alma’s offer to become caretaker of the cemetery.

Filomena enjoys her work at the cemetery. Alma asks her to visit each marker on a regular basis and listen. Filomena has not told Alma that she hears voices in the cemetery. One day, she hears a woman’s voice coming from a grave marker. The voice introduces herself as Bienvenida Inocencia Ricardo de Trujillo. Filomena does not know the woman but is aware that Trujillo was the country’s leader. She senses that Bienvenida is heartbroken, but before she can hear more, she must take a long-distance phone call from Perla, who tells her that she is secretly returning to the DR to stay with Filomena. Perla says nothing of Pepito or her other son, George Washington (also called Jorge).

The narrative shifts to the past to describe Perla’s American life with Tesoro. He was often absent, and Perla suspected him of having an affair. After visiting Pepito in Greece, Perla returned home to discover that Tesoro had left her because he had another family with a woman named Vitalina. Perla went to the woman’s house, armed with a knife as protection against Tesoro. Overcome with confusion and emotion, Perla stabbed and killed Vitalina and her young son (who was also Tesoro’s son). Perla then fled and attempted to buy a ticket to the DR. Pepito and Jorge later learned that Perla was missing and that Tesoro had been arrested on suspicion of murder. Pepito called his partner Richard, whom he kept secret from his family, to tell him that he was flying home.

Time passes, and Filomena listens to the stories from the two grave markers—Manuel’s and Bienvenida’s. One day, she learns that Perla has been arrested for murder. Although Jorge, Tesoro, and Tesoro’s sisters are against Perla, Pepito works to get his mother deported, as he feels that the judicial system in the DR will be kinder than the American system.

From his grave marker, Alma’s father, Dr. Manuel Cruz, tells his story. He was the youngest son of a violent, angry man. His mother homeschooled him and instilled in him a love of reading. Together, they invented a place called Alfa Calenda, where every object has a story. As an adult, he joins with dissidents against the brutal dictatorship of Trujillo, who is also known as El Jefe. Manuel is arrested but manages to escape to Puerto Rico and then to New York. Because his medical credentials are not accepted in the US, he works as an orderly at a hospital, filling in occasionally for the understanding Dr. Beale. During this time, he meets Bienvenida Trujillo, whom he finds friendly and kind. After she leaves the hospital, he falls in love with Lucía, a lively young Dominican woman. Her parents are against their marriage because Manuel doesn’t make enough to support them. Lucía returns with her family to the DR to await the approval of Manuel’s medical credentials, which takes three years.

Life with Manuel in New York is hard for Lucía, and when she miscarries, her parents convince the couple to return to the DR, where they live in luxury and have two children. However, when Manuel gets involved again in dissident groups, Manuel, Lucía, and their daughters go into a second exile in New York. Manuel and Lucía send the girls to a boarding school in Boston. Manuel writes his daughters stories about a character named Babinchi, whose exploits are a fictionalized version of his own life. Only Alma responds, and only to correct his writing and grammar, so he stops writing the stories.

Once the girls are grown, Lucía starts working for the Dominican Mission in the United Nations. In his loneliness, Manuel starts talking to Tatica, the Dominican cleaning woman at his clinic. The two soon begin an affair. When Tatica takes more liberties and risks, Manuel tries several times to end the relationship and eventually uses his connections to have Tatica deported, arranging a regular monthly payment to keep her quiet. When he learns that she has dementia, he arranges for her ongoing care at a nursing home in Higüey. Tatica represents the great shame of his life. He claims that shame is the real cause of his death.

Bienvenida narrates her story. As a young woman of 22, she first met El Jefe (Rafael Leónidas Trujillo) when he visited her home town of Monte Cristi. Bienvenida’s parents were against her marriage to Trujillo; they heard the rumors of Trujillo killing political rivals and knew that he already had a wife and child. Bienvenida was consoled to learn that he and his previous wife had a civil divorce. The only family member who attended her civil marriage ceremony with Trujillo was her cousin Joaquín, whom Trujillo hired. Three years later, Trujillo became president. Bienvenida was a very active and helpful First Lady, but she had a string of miscarriages, after which she was isolated in her quarters. Only Joaquín, who was then El Jefe’s right-hand man, visited her and gave her news. He told her that Trujillo had a mistress who gave him a son. Trujillo sent Bienvenida to Paris, and she stayed at the House of Serenity, where nuns tended to unwed mothers. She learned that the Dominican congress passed a law that effectually invalidated her marriage to Trujillo. A kindly nun, Soeur Odette, consoled her but asked her how such a kind, sweet person could fall in love with a brutal man like Trujillo; this became the central question of Bienvenida’s life.

After a few months, Trujillo visited Bienvenida and told her that he wanted to divorce his current wife, Doña María. He made love to Bienvenida and left her with promises about returning home. She later gave birth to a girl, whom she named Odette. She and her daughter moved to Miami and then to the outskirts of Santiago after Trujillo was forced out of the presidency. He was still married to Doña María, who hired a man to kill Bienvenida. The attempt was unsuccessful, and when Trujillo learned of it, he decided to send Bienvenida back to New York while Odette stayed behind at a convent school.

Bienvenida fell into despair and attempted suicide by overdose. Arístides Ramos, a widowed former police officer, found her and brought her to the hospital. She also spoke to a Dominican doctor, Dr. Manuel Cruz. Bienvenida regained her interest in living, and Trujillo promised to bring Odette on a visit later that year. Meanwhile, Bienvenida and Arístides fell in love and planned to marry, but when Trujillo heard of this, he cancelled Odette’s visit and threatened to cut off Bienvenida’s finances. She ended the relationship with Arístides and decided to move to Montreal. Bienvenida was later reunited with her daughter. She heard of Trujillo’s death and felt free, but it was too late to start a new life. She tried to protect her children and grandchildren from the stories of the Trujillo dictatorship, but they learned about it anyway. She allowed them to think that she divorced him, and she still doesn’t know why she stayed with him, even in death.

Motivated by the similarities between her own life and the stories she hears, Filomena decides to bury a box of her mother’s trinkets in the plot dedicated to El Barón. Later, Alma’s sisters visit with Martillo, the family lawyer, who tells them that one of their father’s accounts has an ongoing payment. They agree to close the account, but they learn that the payments are going to a nursing home nearby. The nuns who run the nursing home tell them that the payments are for Tatica, a woman with dementia. Tatica doesn’t talk to them, and Alma and her sisters leave with the realization that they will never learn their father’s secrets.

Alma appoints her sisters and Brava as the trustees of the cemetery, which is to be a park for the neighborhood with Filomena as its manager. Pepito convinces Alma to make him her literary executor. When Alma requires more care, Filomena hires Perla to help. One day, Perla begins teaching the local children to read. After Alma dies, Filomena and Perla leave the cemetery gates open to the public until nightfall. Characters from the untold stories watch over the visitors at night. The lingering presences of Bienvenida and Manuel stroll arm-in-arm, cherishing their remaining time together; Bienvenida is disappearing from the cemetery because her tale is going to be published.