Swift as Desire — Laura Esquivel

As the millions of fans of Xike Water for Chocolate know, Laura Esquivel is a romanticist whose novels explore the power of love and the truths of the human heart. She returns to those themes in Swift as Desire, the story of a loving and passionate man who has the gift of bringing happiness to everyone except his own wife.

The hero of this novel is Jiibilo Chi, a telegraph operator who is born with the ability to "hear" people's true feelings and respond to their most intimate, unspoken desires. His life changes forever the day he falls deeply and irrevocably in love with Lucha, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy family. She believes money is necessary to ensure happiness, while for who is poor, love and desire are more important than possessions. But their passion for each other enables them to build a happy life together--until their idyll is shattered by a terrible event that drives them bitterly apart. Only years later is his daughter able to unravel the mystery behind her parents' long estrangement and bring about a surprising reconciliation.

The importance of tradition, the strength of family, the mysterious ways in which people connect--these are the things that matter in Swift as Desire, a bittersweet, ultimately uplifting tale about living life to the fullest and learning to hear the words of love.