{ "item_title" : "Archive of Unknown Universes", "item_author" : [" Ruben Reyes Jr "], "item_description" : "From the critically acclaimed author of There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, a piercing debut novel following two families in alternative timelines of the Salvadoran civil war--a stunning exploration of the mechanisms of fate, the gravity of the past, and the endurance of love.Beautiful. --LA Times, A Must-Read Book for SummerLuminous. --People, A Best Book of JulyCambridge, 2018. Ana and Luis's relationship is on the rocks, despite their many similarities, including their mothers who both fled El Salvador during the war. In her search for answers, and against her best judgement, Ana uses The Defractor, an experimental device that allows users to peek into alternate versions of their lives. What she sees leads her and Luis on a quest through Havana and San Salvador to uncover the family histories they are desperate to know, eager to learn if what might have been could fix what is.Havana, 1978. The Salvadoran war is brewing, and Neto, a young revolutionary with a knack for forging government papers, meets Rafael at a meeting for the People's Revolutionary Army. The two form an intense and forbidden love, shedding their fake names and revealing themselves to each other inside the covert world of their activism. When their work separates them, they begin to exchange weekly letters, but soon, as the devastating war rages on, forces beyond their control threaten to pull them apart forever.Ruben Reyes Jr.'s debut novel is an epic, genre-bending journey through inverted worlds--one where war ends with a peace treaty, and one where it ends with a decisive victory by the Salvadoran government. What unfolds is a stunning story of displacement and belonging, of loss and love. It's both a daring imagining of what might have been and a powerful reckoning of our past.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/06/333/631/0063336316_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "28.00", "online_price" : "28.00", "our_price" : "28.00", "club_price" : "28.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "28.00" } }

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The conflict addressed in Archive of Unknown Universes, Ruben Reyes Jr.’s excellent first novel, is the Salvadoran Civil War. What if the war hadn’t happened, and the families ensnared in the fighting had met a different fate?

That’s a bold premise that Reyes makes even bolder with intricate storytelling and the clever invention of an alternate universe viewing machine called the Defractor, which, as he writes, desperate people use “as a cure for their disappointments,” in the hope that witnessing other potential lives will reveal to them what they lack in this one.

Reyes’s story shifts between multiple timeframes and locales. At Harvard in 2018, two American students of Salvadoran heritage, Ana and her boyfriend, Luis, plan a trip to Cuba and El Salvador to conduct thesis research. Ana’s ostensible goal is “to prove that the diaspora existed before 1980, that Salvadorans shaped the world before the war, before their global displacement.” What she’s really most interested in, however, is finding out the identity of a Nicaraguan man whose ID she found with her mother’s belongings.

To that end, she hooks herself up to the university’s Defractor and views alternate versions of her life. She’s fascinated, but Luis, whose goal for traveling to Cuba is to learn more about his great-uncle Neto, a Salvadoran who had traveled to Havana 40 years earlier, is appalled by the machine’s “easy answers and shortcuts.”

Their story alternates with Neto’s, set in San Salvador in 1978. He and six other revolutionaries are part of a movement fighting for a Salvadoran state by and for the Salvadoran people. He becomes a forger along with Rafael, another revolutionary, with whom he falls in love—a love that is very much forbidden.

Archive of Unknown Universes can get convoluted, but it works because Reyes fundamentally understands the appeal of stories about the multiverse: the possibility of better choices and a happier life. At one point, Luis says to Ana, “That’s all life is. One decision, then another.” But decisions carry enormous weight, as Reyes explores in this imaginative work.