The Lacuna

The Lacuna (2009) is Barbara Kingsolver’s sixth novel. This work of historical fiction was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2010 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The novel traces the life of Mexican American Harrison Shepherd from the 1920s to the 1950s. The son of a dissolute flapper who chases rich men, Shepherd begins to make his way by landing a job working for the famous Mexican visual artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and later Communist leader Leon Trotsky. After Trotsky’s assassination, Shepherd moves to Asheville, North Carolina, where he becomes a celebrated novelist of potboiler historical fiction novels about ancient and early modern Mexico. When the Communist ties of his youth come to light during the Red Scare, Shepherd finds himself at the center of controversy.

Kingsolver is the author of several bestselling novels, including award-winning historical fiction The Poisonwood Bible (1998). She often sets her books in her home region of Appalachia, such as her 2012 novel Flight Behavior. The Lacuna explores themes of The Complex Relationship Between Art and Politics, The Role of the Media in Shaping Public Perception and Creating Panic, and The Struggle of Dual Nationality and the Search for Belonging.

This guide references the 2009 Faber and Faber paperback edition of The Lacuna.

Content Warning: The source material references domestic abuse, alcohol addiction, anti-gay bias, antisemitism, and suicide. There are graphic descriptions of death and murder. Additionally, the source material occasionally uses outdated, offensive terms for Japanese people.

Plot Summary

The Lacuna is presented as a collection of writings, journal entries, letters, and newspaper articles compiled by Harrison Shepherd’s longtime secretary, Mrs. Violet Brown. Part 1 is the first chapter of an unfinished memoir by Shepherd documenting his early teenage years living on an estate owned by a wealthy oil industrialist, Enrique, on Isla Pixol, a fictional island in the Gulf of Mexico, with his mother, Salomé. Shepherd is a lonely and neglected boy who spends his days reading paperback novels. He befriends the estate’s chef, Leandro. Leandro teaches Shepherd to cook and gives him a pair of goggles. Shepherd spends long days diving off the coast of Isla Pixol, which is where he finds a lacuna, or underwater tunnel, that leads to an idyllic inland pond. His mother eventually escapes the abusive Enrique and goes to Mexico City, where the two live in poverty, barely supported by his mother’s newest married paramour. Shepherd gets a job mixing plaster for the artist Diego Rivera and meets Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo.

In Part 2, Shepherd is sent to Washington, DC, to live with his father, a government bureaucrat. His father sends him to a military boarding school, the Potomac Academy. While there, Shepherd falls for a fellow student, known as Bull’s Eye. Bull’s Eye takes Shepherd to the Bonus Army encampment where WWI veterans and their families live while demanding their veterans’ benefits. Shepherd is shocked when he witnesses the attack on the Bonus Army by American military forces. Soon after, Shepherd is expelled from the Academy for his sexual relationship with Bull’s Eye. He returns to Mexico City and gets a job as a cook in the Kahlo-Rivera household.

In Part 3, Communist leader Leon Trotsky comes to live in Kahlo and Rivera’s house in Mexico City in 1937. He has been living in exile since Joseph Stalin expelled him from the Soviet Union in 1929. Shepherd admires Trotsky and develops an infatuation for Trotsky’s secretary, Jean Van Heijenoort. Shepherd begins to take on more responsibilities, typing and translating for Rivera and Trotsky. While living there, Trotsky, Rivera, and Kahlo all encourage Shepherd’s desire to become an author. After Kahlo has an affair with Trotsky, Trotsky leaves the Rivera-Kahlo house, taking Shepherd with him. In May 1940, a group of Stalinists attempt to assassinate Trotsky. The household lives under intense security measures. In August 1940, a Spanish Soviet agent infiltrates the household and assassinates Trotsky with an ice pick. Shepherd believes the police confiscated the novel he was working on and all of his private journals during their investigation of the crime. He is devastated by Trotsky’s death and the loss of his papers. Frida Kahlo arranges for Shepherd to leave Mexico.

In Part 4, Shepherd returns to the United States. He learns his father is dead. He decides to settle in Asheville, North Carolina. He initially lives at a boarding house run by Mrs. Biddle along with his future secretary, a middle-aged widow named Mrs. Violet Brown. He works teaching Spanish at the local technical college and cooking for the other boarders. World War II begins, but Shepherd is not eligible to serve in the armed forces, because he is gay. Instead, he works transporting art from Washington, DC, to Asheville for safekeeping. He earns enough at this job to buy a house in Asheville. After he moves in, he finally opens a crate Kahlo sent with him when he fled Mexico. Inside, he finds his half-finished manuscript and personal notebooks, which Kahlo had somehow saved from the police. Once again encouraged to pursue his dream of becoming an author, he finishes his first novel about the clash between the Aztec and the Spanish conquistadors in early modern Mexico. The book is a hit, and soon after, he publishes his second one, which is also a best-seller. However, Shepherd comes under increasing scrutiny for his past ties to Communists despite never having been politically active himself. An FBI agent comes to question him and Mrs. Brown about his Communist tendencies. In the midst of this, Shepherd and Mrs. Brown travel to the Yucatan Peninsula to do research for Shepherd’s third novel about the Inca.

In Part 5, Shepherd reconnects with Tom Cuddy, with whom he worked transporting artwork during World War II, and continues to work on the novel. The FBI concludes its investigation and charges Shepherd with having dangerous Communist ties. As a result, the publisher threatens to not publish Shepherd’s completed third novel.

In Part 6, Shepherd begins to receive hate mail as news of his alleged Communist ties is published. Language from his novels is used in the press to imply he is anti-American. Tom cuts off all ties with him as a result. Shepherd is compelled to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about his Communist ties, even though he insists he has no political affiliations; he was just a cook and typist.

In Part 7, Shepherd returns to Isla Pixol with Mrs. Brown to escape some of the scrutiny and hate the investigation and its publicity caused. While there, he reconnects with Leandro and spends his days diving, as he did when he was a boy. One day, he dives into the lacuna and never resurfaces. He is presumed dead. Mrs. Brown returns to Asheville. She reads Shepherd’s childhood notebook and realizes he may still be alive after having swum through the lacuna to the inland pool. She receives a mysterious note from Frida Kahlo that suggests this possibility. Mrs. Brown decides to compile Shepherd’s writings, to be published 50 years in the future, so that his work is preserved for posterity.