41 pages • 1 hour read
Ana CastilloSo Far from God
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Final Farewell of Don Domingo, sin a Big mitote; and an Encounter with un Doctor Invisible, or Better Known in These Parts as a Psychic Surgeon, Who, in Any Case, Has No Cure for Death”
Domingo returns to his old habits of gambling and loses the family home in a cock fight. Sofi must now pay rent to the new owner of the farm, Judge Julano. Eventually, Sofi becomes fed up with Domingo’s gambling and lazy nature and, with the help of her white “peacock-raising lawyer” (219), serves him divorce papers. Domingo moves into the adobe he built for Caridad and pays Sofi rent, roughly equivalent to the rent she pays Judge Julano.
Sofi notices that La Loca is “a little more off-center than usual” (219) and has lost interest in her usual habits of going to the acequia, playing the fiddle, and riding horses. She loses a significant amount of weight and also has a sore throat and feels tired all the time. While watching TV one night, Sofi has a premonition of Loca’s death.
Dr. Tolentino examines Loca and informs Sofi that she has HIV. To Sofi, this seems impossible, but she accepts the doctor’s diagnosis. He urges Sofi to maintain her faith in God and performs a sort of “psychic surgery” (229) in which he magically opens her stomach and reaches in with his hand to remove cystic fibroids and a tumor in Loca’s ovary.
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By Ana Castillo
