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“My greatest inspiration is living life to the fullest—however long that life might be.”
Ileana Araguti
Should you meet Ileana today, one cannot tell of any troubled past. She camouflages her past well with a loud laughter. She loves living life to the fullest. Her writings are aimed for inspiration and awareness.
She has published in Spain and is scheduled to publish her first novel in the summer. Ileana is currently an educator, a writer, wife and a mother of a son and a daughter. She loves to travel with her family and resides in Southern California.
Ileana's inspiration for Shattered Paradise came after she visited her native country of Nicaragua, twenty-one years later after she left with her mother. Upon her return, she rediscovered a totally different country from the one she left behind. It was then that her writing took flight, with the hope of bringing awareness about her beloved vanishing rain and cloud forests, and ultimately, the children of war and the landfills.
Reviewed by Maria Victoria Beltran for Readers' Favorite
"Shattered Paradise: Memoirs of a Nicaraguan War Child" is Ileana Araguti's life story. As a child, she grows up in an isolated farm house near a mystical city dubbed as the City of Mist. Her grandfather Abuelo Lalo tells her stories that ground her to her country's folkloric culture. Carefree and innocent, she is the eighth child of a womanizing father who is believed to have sired twenty children. Her mother turns to religion for solace and cannot do anything but shed tears. Meanwhile, Nicaragua is in turmoil and President Somoza is defeated. A revolutionary war followed and Ileana's mother makes a decision that will change their lives forever. Ileana is not a child anymore and she has to face the harsh realities of life.
Author Ileana Araguti's writing style is said to be influenced by her Nicaraguan grandfather. It is lyrical and poetic and borders on the mystical. In her book "Shattered Paradise", she writes of a childhood that is set in a magical place. Indeed, this is a child that grows up in a paradise on earth but as she grows up, her paradise is shattered. At the age of twelve, the author's life changed forever and this book is a tribute to her childhood, her mother and to Nicaragua. Descriptive and imaginative, the book brings the reader to this magical land with its diminishing wildlife, its struggles against the influence of the Spanish missionaries and its people who are deeply attached to their folkloric culture. The author writes from her heart and this is one of the reasons why her story is both compelling and interesting.
