Alma, a professor and writer, retires, and she realizes she has many unfinished manuscripts, stories she hasn’t finished telling. After burning most of them, she buries some of the manuscripts in land she inherits in the Dominican Republic, creating an air of mystery and intrigue among the barrio inhabitants and visitors. Alma hires Filomena, an illiterate community member, initially to help her burn the boxes of manuscripts and then to act as a caretaker of the buried stories. Some manuscripts refuse to burn, and the subjects of the untold stories speak to Filomena from the makeshift graves: one is Alma’s father, and one is titled Bienvenida, referring to the ex-wife of the brutal Dominican dictator Trujillo.
The novel includes heartbreaking and harrowing incidents related to Filomena and her sister, Perla, and Perla’s two children. Most of Perla’s story is recounted through Filomena’s memories. Her strong family bonds, despite estrangement, are essential for developing the themes of the Cemetery of Untold Stories. Alvarez delves into family secrets, hostile governments, immigration issues, and groups that are marginalized in both the United States and the Dominican Republic.
Alma’s relationship with her sisters and Filomena’s complicated relationship with her sister, Perla, are the baseline for the plot. The story explores many philosophical questions, one of the main ones being: If a person decides to carry their stories to the grave, does anyone else have the right to betray them and tell the stories? Can anyone, such as a writer, unearth the mysteries of another’s heart while they are in the afterlife? How does one truly bury secrets? Will ghosts tell the stories? In any case, Alvarez is the consummate storyteller who is in love with writing, and she captures universal sadness and struggles in her characters.
