Blessings is a sweeping, lyrical novel that traces the enduring power of spoken words—oaths, blessings, and curses—across centuries, cultures, and bloodlines. From ancient Greece to modern Argentina, lives are shaped not only by actions, but by promises uttered in moments of love, fear, loyalty, and betrayal, their echoes carried forward through time.

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The novel opens on the shores of Salamis in 480 BCE, where a soldier’s vow to the gods secures survival but fractures belonging, passing down a legacy of restlessness and exile. Centuries later, in West Africa, a griot’s blessing over a royal child becomes corrupted by moral betrayal, binding ambition to downfall. In nineteenth-century Japan, beauty and rivalry give rise to a whispered curse sewn into silk, its destructive power carried silently from one generation to the next. In twentieth-century Argentina, a man’s refusal to betray his companions under torture becomes a vow of silence so absolute that it seeps into the private lives of his descendants, imprisoning them in unspoken truths.

 

As these histories unfold, their bloodlines gradually entwine, revealing how language—revered, misused, or withheld—can shape destiny as decisively as war or inheritance. In the present day, a linguist begins to recognize her own family’s patterns of displacement, broken love, and silence as part of this vast continuum. Confronted with the weight of centuries, she becomes the point of convergence where scattered fragments of the past demand reckoning.

 

At once mythic and intimate, Blessings is a meditation on language as both instrument and inheritance—capable of harm, endurance, and transformation. The novel asks whether new words, spoken with intention and care, can finally loosen the grip of ancient vows and allow future generations to choose belonging over fate.