Nino, however, has more sympathy for her plight. Virginia doesn’t know what to do to get out. As Virginia grows, she becomes more defiant, but Doctorita and Nino both remind her that her family will only sell her to another family.

She asks Doctorita if she can one day go to college and have a real career, but Doctorita tells her she doesn’t need to have any skills to do her slave duties. When Doctorita understands what she’s doing, Virginia gets into trouble. She is too young to leave on her own, but gradually shows signs of defiance in whatever small ways she can. Virginia is now old enough to realize she can never go home and she will never be paid. Doctorita, however, starts letting her leave to go on errands. She is frequently beaten for displeasing Doctorita, and the abuse can be so savage she suffers nosebleeds and bruises all over her limbs. From the day she moves there, Virginia must cook, clean, and care for the whole family, including baby Jaimito. She must call Carlitos ‘Nino,’ and Romelia ‘Doctorita,’ because of their respective statuses in society. She moves in with Carlitos and his wife, Romelia. She also thinks she will be able to visit her family – or at least her mother – once a month, but it isn’t long before she learns this is not true. Virginia is worried about leaving, but her father is a drunk and gets violent, so she is relieved to be escaping this – although, she doesn’t know what to expect working as a servant. With money being so tight, they feel they don’t have a choice but to make Virginia go, in the hope she will make a life for herself. When Virginia is just seven, her parents agree to let her work as a servant and nanny for a mestizo in another town a few hours away.

The story is set in 1980s rural Ecuador when white upper class “mestizos” ruled and made slaves of the lower class native people. Virginia is born into a very poor family living in rural Ecuador. Resau originally planned this book as a work of nonfiction, but she opted to fictionalize it to improve the flow and make it more accessible to teen readers. The Queen of Water was a finalist for the 2012 Colorado Book Award for Young Adult Literature. Resau collaborated with María Virginia Farinango to construct this book, which is based on a true story. The book has been widely well-received and praised for its appeal to anyone struggling to find his or her place in the world. The Queen of Water (2011), a young adult novel by Laura Resau concerns a girl taken as a slave who ends up on a journey of self-discovery in Ecuador.

The Queen of Water by Laura Resau