The Deep Blue Memory [signed]

Monique Laxalt Urza's first novel is an intimate portrait of a second-generation Basque-American who struggles to reconcile her memories of the simplicity of the past with the reality of change in the present. The Deep Blue Memory is a fictionalized story of immigration told from the point of view of the granddaughter of Basque immigrant grandparents and daughter of a prominent first-generation family. The Deep Blue Memory addresses themes central to all of human existence. In particular, the book examines the eternal human search for identity that at the level of the first generation is forward-looking, but at the level of the grandchildren of immigrants, too often looks backward, clinging to images of a remembered past. The Deep Blue Memory treats the elements of time and knowledge, and of art and reality, as being intertwined. More than about any specific character, this book is about family—its make-up, its complexity, and its delicateness when resettled in America, the land of cataclysmic change.