The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez

Talib and Maria Carmen are Nestor’s sidekicks. The three become fast friends on Nestor’s first day of school, and their relationship grows throughout the novel. Talib and Maria Carmen are good students with a love for trivia and warmly welcome Nestor to the trivia club. The three are a solid team—not only are they Nestor’s trivia club teammates, but they also work together to defeat the tule vieja. Both Talib and Maria Carmen have animals—a dog and goats, respectively—that are stolen by the tule vieja, causing them great distress and motivating them and Nestor to defeat the tule vieja.

Talib and Maria Carmen have lived in New Haven all their life, juxtaposing Nestor’s childhood spent moving around. While Nestor longs for a stationary life like Talib and Maria Carmen have experienced, Talib and Maria Carmen are envious of how much Nestor has traveled and seen of the country. They help Nestor realize the beauty in the parts of him he resents or hides—from his constant moving around to his secret ability to speak to animals. The blossoming friendship between Nestor, Talib, and Maria Carmen plays a central part in giving Nestor a community and making New Haven home for Nestor. Their friendship also represents the importance of teamwork to solve problems.

Maria Carmen shares some similarities with Nestor. She knows what it’s like to have a family member in the military. Her older brother served in the National Guard and was deployed to Iraq, where he was killed by a grenade. She also comes from a Spanish-speaking household. Maria Carmen is bold, kind, and intelligent. She leads the trivia club and shows up at Nestor’s house to recruit him to join and fearlessly tackles the tasks of figuring out how to dismantle Brandon’s hunting traps and, ultimately, defeating the tule vieja.

Talib is a generous and loyal friend. After Maria Carmen’s brother died, he’s the only kid in town who stayed friends with Maria Carmen through her grief. He helps Maria Carmen’s family around the house and packs Nestor’s overnight bag for him after his Abuela goes missing—signs of empathy and emotional maturity. Talib is the most cautious of the three friends. He is consistently spooked when walking through the woods and is reluctant to go back there to look for answers about the tule vieja. However, his cautious nature never holds him back from sticking by his friends’ sides.

Brandon is a fellow sixth grader at New Haven Middle School. Brandon is also part of the trivia club, but he’s only on the team because Miss Humala made him join due to his bad grade in her class. Brandon begins the book as an antagonist and bully. He taunts other students, flings peas and pudding at Talib and Nestor, and frequently tries to physically intimidate Nestor. However, Brandon is a dynamic character who eventually becomes a valuable friend, ally, and team member for Nestor, Talib, and Maria Carmen. The evolution of Nestor and Brandon’s relationship—from foe to friend—represents growth and the power of embracing change and new opportunities, much like Nestor’s journey to embrace life in New Haven. This supports the theme of Finding One’s Place in the World.

Brandon is a foil for Nestor and is his opposite in every way. While Nestor is studious and passionate about trivia club, Brandon tries to sabotage the team’s first competition by purposefully giving wrong answers. While Nestor communicates with animals and befriends them, Brandon hunts out of season and sets illegal traps to hunt animals and aid the tule vieja. As Brandon wears military paraphernalia from multiple branches of the armed forces, Nestor pegs him as a wannabe military kid who doesn’t truly understand what being a military kid means. Brandon’s aggression reinforces his interest in military toughness, without paying attention to the attributes of respect and honor that Nestor’s father instilled in him.

As the book progresses, it is evident that some of Brandon’s cruelty comes from fear, as the tule vieja threatens Brandon and his father to get Brandon to help her. When the tule vieja steals Brandon’s father, Brandon is in a similar position to Nestor, providing the common ground necessary for Brandon to join the group in working to stop the tule vieja. In the process, Nestor learns that Brandon’s father has a military background too. Brandon’s unlikely addition to the group of friends allows the group to learn more about each other beyond their initial impressions, find empathy and understanding for each other, and form true friendship.

Nestor’s Abuela, named Guadelupe Lopez, shares Nestor’s ability to communicate with animals. She raised Nestor’s father in New Haven, Texas, and still lives in Nestor’s father’s childhood home. Nestor and his mother move in with Abuela, whose house offers a respite from life on an Army base—a first for Nestor—and eventually feels like home to Nestor too.

Abuela is generous and loving, sharing wisdom with Nestor, sewing up worn nursing scrubs for Nestor’s mother, or cooking a warm meal for the family. Abuela’s parents sent her to the US by herself at the age of 14 to get her out of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Abuela didn’t speak English and had to leave behind her home and family to start over. Abuela’s experience immigrating to the US juxtaposes with Nestor’s experience moving around the country. Nestor often feels like no one understands what his life is like, but Abuela understands what Nestor goes through when he has to start over again in a new town. Cuban culture is another important part of Abuela’s life. Abuela likes to cook Cuban dishes, like ham croquetas, and recalls stories from Latin American folklore.

Stories from Abuela’s childhood ultimately hold clues to the strange witch lurking in the woods. Abuela grew up hearing stories of the tule vieja, whose story originates in Panama; her attempts to help the animals escape initially provoke suspicion among the townspeople. The desire to clear his Abuela’s name is a key motivation for Nestor’s journey in defeating the tule vieja. The knowledge Abuela shares, however, helps Nestor and his friends figure out what is lurking in the woods and stealing the local animals.

Nestor’s father, Raúl Armando Lopez, is an explosives ordnance disposal specialist for the US Army. His job is to disarm explosive devices in combat zones. During the novel, he is deployed in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base. Nestor’s father grew up in New Haven, in the same home where Nestor lives with Abuela. This helps bridge the distance between Nestor and his father during Raúl’s deployment, as Nestor discovers old toys and play spaces his father used in the house as a child. Nestor has a close relationship with his father, and the two share many activities together, from Raúl getting Nestor’s baseball signed with every location in which he is deployed to animal trivia quizzes exchanged in every letter. However, Nestor still struggles with his father’s absence.

Nestor’s mother is a consistent source of strength for Nestor. She works to keep Nestor resilient and cared for: “She’s always been the strong one, the one rubbing my back when I cry about Dad’s missing something at school or home, when I worry about what I’ve seen on the news” (153). She promotes positive attitudes through Raúl’s absence, taking endless selfies (that always seem to cut off someone’s head) to share special moments with Raúl and repeating the mantras “Always be Positive, Always be Happy” when writing letters to Raúl (43). She works as a nurse and tends to worry away at her nursing scrubs, causing Abuela to have to frequently repair them. Though Nestor’s mother puts up a strong front for the family, she also struggles with the weight of missing and worrying about Raúl.

Nestor’s relationship with his parents highlights the theme Navigating the Challenges of Military Family Life. Raúl’s absence also highlights Nestor’s coming-of-age journey in the novel: When faced with the challenge of stopping the tule vieja, Nestor longs for his father’s expert guidance, but Nestor must learn how to rely on himself and his friends to find a way to save the day.

Miss Humala is Nestor’s science teacher and sponsors the New Haven Middle School trivia club. Miss Humala can sympathize with Nestor’s experience of constantly moving around and starting over, though for very different reasons. Not only did she just move to New Haven the previous year, but she also grew up with a mother whose lifestyle forced the family to move around constantly. Miss Humala’s mother is a tule vieja—a shape-shifting witch who can steal animals’ powers during an eclipse—and thus spends her life in search of the next eclipse. Miss Humala’s nomadic childhood echoes Nestor’s experience moving around with the military and Abuela’s experience of immigration. When Nestor battles against Miss Humala in the book, this parallel serves as a metaphor for Nestor’s journey to overcome his internal conflict and struggle with belonging, supporting the theme of Finding One’s Place in the World.

Miss Humala is a stern teacher who always seems to be in a bad mood. It’s later revealed that this is because of the turmoil caused by her mother. Miss Humala’s character is both a help and hindrance to solving the mystery: While Miss Humala tries to stop the children from defeating the tule vieja, she also inadvertently gives them clues, including her mother’s greatest weakness, when the children overhear her arguing with the tule vieja.