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From the Minnesota StarTribune
"The mystical symbiosis of sand and surf comes lovingly to life . . . a salty sense of oceanic sensousness."

From Library Journal 
Monica Winters Borrero is a child of mismatched parents: her father is a liberal, romantic American journalist and her mother a cold, beautiful, and rebellious Salvadoran. Monica's early years in the paradise of upper-class El Salvador are idyllic. Then, in 1985, the civil war comes too close, and her mother disappears, presumably drowned. Years later, Monica is living in the United States and working as a physical therapist when she encounters Will Lucero, the grieving husband of comatose Yvette. The three end up at a clinic in El Salvador that promises Yvette a treatment that comes from the venom of a sea creature. As Monica and Will work together to investigate the mysterious clinic and its ties to secrets from Monica's past, they fall in love and discover the connection of the women of Monica's family to the ocean and its creatures. The subject of the civil war is not as fully explored as one might hope, and the mystery is relatively predictable. Still, the romance satisfies, and the descriptions of the power of the sea are beautiful and haunting. Like her heroine, first novelist Barron has a Salvadoran mother and knows the country of which she writes. Recommended for larger public libraries.-Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, OR Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

From Booklist
Secrets and lies drive the intricate plot of this first novel, which is both a gripping mystery and an intimate drama of love and betrayal. Growing up in a wealthy established family in El Salvador at the time of the civil war, Monica learns from her beloved mother, Alma, about the exciting science of the ocean, but after Alma drowns, Monica, 12, moves with her American father to Connecticut. Fifteen years later, she is a physical therapist, and one of her patients, in a coma after a car accident, might be helped by an experimental ocean-shell treatment offered in an El Salvador clinic. Why is Monica's father reluctant for her to return to where her mother died? When they do go back, Monica makes astonishing discoveries, past and present, that make her question, "Who was the fragile one after all?" In a contemporary version of the heroic quest story, Monica's search for home opens up a world of revolutionary politics, science, and passion. Hazel Rochman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

From The Miami Herald
``Alma Borrero Winters believed that everything in life begins and ends with the ocean.'' With this evocative sentence, Sandra Rodriguez Barron, born in Puerto Rico and raised in Connecticut and El Salvador, sets up her debut novel, an engaging opera prima about sea shells and their power in the resurrection of two women from different times and places. Alma, a marine scientist and shell collector, is the mother of Monica Winters, the appealing character at the center of the story. Alma's disappearance and presumed death in El Salvador during that country's civil war had left her 12-year-old daughter -- now an adult physical therapist who soothes patients with ''magic hands'' -- with a spiritual void, a yearning and a burden. Monica's father, Bruce, never wanted to talk about his wife or the activities that had led to her disappearance. Their marriage was as split as the ``two halves of a bivalve.'' The other woman who figures in the story is Yvette Lucero, who has been in a coma for 23 months. Trapped inside a motionless body, she still speaks loudly and provides one of the book's most compelling characters -- especially since Monica is falling for her handsome husband, Will. When Yvette's mother whisks Yvette from her hospital bed in New Haven, Conn., and flies her to El Salvador to seek the legendary curative powers of a venomous and rare sea shell, Monica, now 27, follows. On this trip, Monica will find what she had been searching for so many years -- herself. With plenty of intrigue and inspired storytelling, Rodriguez Barron takes us from the organized and common-sense world of suburban Connecticut to the passion-driven reactions and social-class impositions of affluence in El Salvador. ''Alma [had won] her escape from a society she hated by diving into the frothy wings of her beloved sea.'' The author seamlessly moves from one world to the other, from one engrossing piece of the story to another, from Yankee coolheadedness to Latin passion with the ease of someone who knows both well. Rodriguez Barron indulges in plenty of sea-faring metaphors, but they're never gratuitous or too maudlin. In fact, some of these passages are among the author's more enlightened and spiritual: ''She understood that there was a force in the world that had a claim on everything, and that it would take back what is sick and no longer functional and make it clean and whole again.'' The sea, and Rodriguez Barron's memorable writing, are the forces that lend The Heiress of Water a pull as strong and inexorable as a Pacific undercurrent. Marta Barber is a writer in Miami. 

Online Reviews:

From the Sarasota Herald Tribune.com
“I read an advance copy of "The Heiress of Water" by Sandra Rodriguez Barron (Rayo), out this month. It's a great read, about a woman whose childhood in El Salvador came to an abrupt end at age 12 when her mother disappeared in an accident at sea. Fifteen years later, Monica finds herself uprooted from a comfortable life in Connecticut by the mysteries of her past and the sad circumstances of another woman locked in a coma. Monica's mother's studies of the curative properties of the venom of a particular sea creature bring her back to El Salvador. I'm trying to convince the publisher to send Rodriguez Barron to Sarasota for a reading of this intriguing book.” Susan Rife, Book Editor Herald Tribune.com (Sarasota, FL)

From LatinoStories.com
It's rare to find a first book by an author and get the sense that the best is yet to come. Yet Sandra Rodriguez Barron shows off her writing skills in The Heiress of Water in such an impressive way that the reader can't help but feel that while this may be her first book, she certainly knows what she is doing. Barron has a gift for narration and tells this story in such a smooth way that it's not surprising that the German language rights to this book have recently been sold. The book is about Monica, a woman whose life is pulled like an ocean current toward a dark and deep unknown. Her connection with nature and more specifically, the ocean, provides her with a unique perspective on life. At the beginning of the story, we meet her mother, Alma, who has an unparalleled understanding of the ocean and the powers of the sea. A native of El Salvador, Alma has inherited a passion for cones from her own family and has made it her life mission to find the Conus furiosus, a cone snail species with the power to heal.

The mother's relationship with a reputed Communist in El Salvador during the time of the Civil War mysteriously results in her disappearance. Once she is presumed dead, Monica and her father, an American citizen, depart to Connecticut where they start their lives anew. There, as an adult working as a physical therapist, Monica meets Will, a Puerto Rican man whose wife has been in a horrible car accident and who needs a miracle. Monica and Will have a common goal--to help his wife, yet they guiltily and mutually share strong feelings for each other.

To a certain extent, this book is not what "critics" might consider literary, in part because it is about love and relationships and not about the social ills of the world. However, it's too easy to dismiss such books. Sure, on many levels The Heiress is about relationships--Monica and Will's, Will's and his wife's, Monica and her boyfriend's, and so on. But it is far from a cliche of boy and girl falling in love. As Barron tells the story, we learn about oceanic life, about El Salvador, about myths and legends, and about the upper-class. The latter is significant because while many Latino/a writers today inevitable wind up writing from the perspective of disenfranchised lower-class populations, this book is about characters with privilege. It doesn't present a perfectly realistic view of all classes, but perhaps that is not its purpose. One scene of a young, poor Salvadoran girl who gives birth and eagerly wants to give her newborn away without regret exemplifies a distorted view that the narrator has of those without money and power. While such lower-class characters are not romanticized or overly idealized, they are at times presented in a way that may be unsettling to those who are used to seeing the poor Latinos as the heroes. Still, just the fact that Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins chose to publish a work that is about the "other" Latino socioeconomic class is a credit both to their open-mindedness and Barron's creativity.

I am unaware of Barron's plans for future novels, but based on this work, I get the strong sense that she will have a mainstream following. The story is somewhat complex, yet the author weaves it together in such a seamless, polished way, that I know I won't be the only one waiting for her second book.

From Latino Perspectives Magazine (Arizona edition--"New Books to Take Mind off Summer Heat"):
"This perfect beach book is set mainly on the shores of El Salvador and combines elements of mystery and a multi-layered love story."

Authors:

--James W. Hall, best-selling author of Forests of the Night: “Richly conceived and lyrically written. A fine,magical novel.”

-- John Dufresne, author of Johnny Too Bad: "A stunning literary achievement, a tense, propulsive, hauntingly beautiful tale of the first order."

--Isabel Allende, bestselling author of Zorro and Daughter of Fortune: "Sandra Rodriguez Barron’s exuberant prose yields an immensely entertaining reading experience. You are fraught with the certainty that she is a gatekeeper of the secrets of the sea."


Booksellers:

From Book Sense (a publication of the Association of American Booksellers)
The Heiress of Water is a beautiful and lively book, with characters who are passionate about nature, healing and each other. Everything always comes back to water-- from the black sand beaches, to the search for a cone snail that might offer a medical cure, to a philosophy of life passed on from mother to daughter.”

--Julie Leonard, Troubadour Books, Boulder, CO.

From the world's top Cones and Conotoxins website:
http://grimwade.biochem.unimelb.edu.au/cone/more.html

"A thoughtful, well researched and engaging novel. I recommend it to you."

--Bruce Livett, PhD, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Melbourne, Australia


Reader Reviews from HarperCollins.com FirstLook:
 
"From the first page I was captured under Sandra Rodriquez's spell as she wove a tale that began with the ocean. This isn't your look-at-the-pretty-sunset book, but a tale about the living pulse of the ocean and how it affected the characters involved. Through Monica Winters, the heroine, we're taken on a journey of the darker, painful, and yearning side of life that affects Monica in El Salvador and Connecticut, USA. The atmosphere in El Salvador is steeped in legend, religion and violence and heightened with the loss of Monica's mother . . . After reading The Heiress of Water, I came away with the feeling I will never forget this book or its multi-talented author, Sandra Rodriquez Barron. She took me on a journey of my five senses that left me gasping in wonder. Monica has the uncanny ability to crawl inside of every subject she writes about and view it from within." — NANCY (CHEBOYGAN, MI)

"This is a warm novel that draws you into the story immediately! It's a story about love, loss, and relationships. Also about healing. I found this book to be romantic in its ideas and refreshing to think that life returns from where it started. It also has a couple of twists that will surprise you! This is a definite winner that will stay with you long after you've read it!" — QUETZI (SOUTH BEND, IN)

"The Heiress of Water is a beautifully written book by Sandra Rodriguez Barron. I found myself swept away into Barron's story and characters. I would definitely recommend this book to others and this would also be an excellent book club choice." — SHELLEY (HENDERSON, NV) "First time novelist, Sandra Rodriguez Barron's The Heiress of Water is a terrific family saga/historical fiction which mainly takes place in El Salvador. You will find yourself loving, caring & cheering for main character, Monica Winters Borrero as she fights to discover her roots and search for inner peace & closure with loved ones. Don't miss it—great discussable issues for book review clubs. Bravo!" — LAURIE (FARMINGTON HILLS, MI)

"The Heiress of Water by Sandra Rodriguez Barron is at once a literary mystery, and the story of a legacy of El Salvadorian homeland, seashells and oceans, days of civil wars, love, family histories, and the necessity of being true to yourself. Monica was born and raised in El Salvador with her parents and her maternal family until her teenage years. Then, after the death of her mother in strange circumstances, she and her father moved to her father's homeland in Connecticut. Years later, Monica still lives in Connecticut and is just reaching that age where she has a good career, good friends, love of her father, and the hope of love and marriage. When she meets a man whose wife is in a coma and needs help from Monica, she finds herself returning to El Salvador and the many mysteries of her family, and the medicinal properties of the sea creatures that her mother shared with Monica when she was a child. This novel is at once lyrical in its written word, and informative of El Salvadorian life. The mysteries grow as Monica finds out that all things are not as they had seemed. This is a wonderful story that covers geography and ideas that are not commonplace in novels, while also dealing with the mysteries of love and family that are common to us all. Should be a hit with book groups who like mystery, relationships, and foreign places!!" — RONNA (POTOMAC, MD)
 
"The Heiress of Water is a remarkable debut novel! Barron is a first-rate storyteller who brings amazing depth to her characters in this beautifully written book. I found it to be a tremendously rich love story—love of family, country, nature, and love of life. And yet beneath the wonderful, heartbreaking story lie important moral and ethical issues that really give the reader quite a lot of food for thought, too. I just couldn't put it down. And I can't wait to read Ms. Barron's next book!" — ROSEMARY (LAGUNA HILLS, CA)
 
"I loved this book and lapped it up in a weekend. It had all the elements needed for a perfect novel, and while I knew one part of the plot fairly early on, it still had plenty of twists and turns to keep my interest. Sandra's lyrical writing style was a pleasure to read and it was clear she had done her homework in developing the story. I will certainly be on the lookout for more from her. Recommended." — JANET (ELGIN, IL)

"Barron finds true success in this new novel in her inspiring and unique story. The complexities of her novel make it all the more interesting and keep the reader enthralled. The use of her own history and knowledge of the Salvadoran and Dominican Republic cultures only aids in the depth of the book and make the reader feel like an eye-witness to the entire account." — EMILY (ENGLEWOOD, CO)

"Hard to believe it's the author's first novel! Sandra Rodriguez Barron's The Heiress of Water has a quiet and riveting beauty. Her juxtaposition of current science in a world where the impossible seems possible is artfully done. I appreciated her delicate and sensitive treatment of the 'love scenes' as well. Excellent book!" — CYNTHIA (ALTADENA, CA)

" . . . As the paths of the characters intertwine, surprises and secrets are revealed. Refreshingly sensual, it is mesmerizing to read about the characters and how they experience the effects of love and loss. The Heiress of Water explores the depths of human emotion while many other novels choose only to skim the surface." — LAURA (BRISTOL, CT)

"This book was very impressive for a first novel. It was extremely well written and powerfully presented. The plot was captivating and refreshingly original. We are sure to see more great work from Ms. Barron." — ZEESA (FLUSHING, NY)
 
"I couldn't put this book down. The story is complicated and often heart-wrenching. The author delves so deeply into the heart of all the characters, even the minor ones. The transitions in time, from English to Spanish, from place to place were all seamless. The thing that totally blows me away is that this book is the author's first. She has truly shown that she has a talent few authors will ever have. She writes with a voice like Harper Lee, so incredibly alive that reading the book was more like seeing a play. My book club will definitely be reading this one! Bravo!" — DIANE (VANCOUVER, WA)