The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-19

Chapters 20-26

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Background

Authorial Context: Adrianna Cuevas

Adrianna Cuevas is an author based in Austin, Texas, who is originally from Miami, Florida. She is a first-generation Cuban American. The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez is her debut novel, and she has since authored four other novels, including Cuba in My Pocket and The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto. Her work primarily features Cuban American protagonists, drawing from her own cultural heritage.

According to a video on Cuevas’s YouTube channel, Cuevas draws on personal experience to bring Nestor’s story to life. One major influence for Cuevas is her own experience as a military spouse. In exploring Nestor’s experience as a military kid, Cuevas pulls from her emotions and experiences while her husband was deployed in Iraq. Nestor’s love of animal trivia also comes from Cuevas’s own life, as Cuevas’s son is an animal trivia fan (“The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez- Introduction.” YouTube, uploaded by Adrianna Cuevas, 23 Mar. 2020).

Another major influence is Cuevas’s Cuban American heritage. From Cuban foods to popular Cuban sayings such as “Chao, Pescao” (17), Cuevas incorporates Cuban cultural references throughout the novel. This illuminates the Cuban American experience and how Nestor’s heritage—like Cuevas’s—shapes his world. Cuevas’s lived experience also comes through in the story’s main antagonist. Cuevas shares in the novel’s Author’s Note that the legend of the tule vieja comes from Panama and Costa Rica—countries where Cuevas has previously lived. This legend is explored further in the next context section.

In The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez, Cuevas blends fantasy, magic, and reality rooted strongly in her own lived experience to create a dynamic story that speaks to the power of imagination while authentically representing the realities her characters face as they move through the world.

Cultural Context: The Legend of the Tule Vieja

The central conflict in The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez centers on a malevolent tule vieja intent on stealing powers from local animals to make herself unstoppable. The tule vieja in the novel is inspired by the legend of La Tulevieja from Panama and Costa Rica. Cuevas describes this legend in an Author’s Note at the end of the novel:

While the tule vieja that Nestor encounters can turn into various animals by biting them, the Panamanian and Costa Rican tule vieja takes a permanent half-woman, half-bird form. Short batwings sprout from her back, and sharp hawk talons take the place of her feet. Wandering through towns at night, she searches for her lost children, drawn by the cries of newly born babies and the howls of dogs (279).

Cuevas likens the story of La Tulevieja to the legend of La Llorona (“the weeping woman”), a popular ghost story and bogeyman legend in Mexico and across Latin America. The legend of La Llorona features a monstrous woman—usually in the form of a malevolent ghost—who killed her children and now wanders, searching for them while she weeps. In both legends, the woman is known to kidnap children, making it a popular story to scare children into good behavior.

Legends such as La Tulevieja and La Llorona speak to deep societal fears, such as the threat of losing a child. In The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez, the tule vieja acts as a metaphor for the absences Nestor feels in his life—the absence of his father and the absence of long-term friends or a sense of home. The tule vieja kidnaps animals, and even Brandon’s father and Nestor’s Abuela, as she prepares for the solar eclipse to activate her powers and enable her to fulfill her malevolent plans. This kidnapping speaks to fear of separation from beloved pets and people—a fear that Nestor knows all too well from his father’s deployment. In fighting to stop the tule vieja, Nestor must face these fears and reckon with the way growing attached to friendships and places can also leave one vulnerable to difficult emotions and loss. In doing so, he is able to save his community and establish a true sense of home in New Haven.