Ofelia: A Love and Rockets Book

The eleventh volume of The Complete Love and Rockets Library (the fifth chronologically in Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar main storyline) collects stories from 2000-2005. In Ofelia, the sisters, the kids, and the cousins are all settled comfortably in California after leaving Palomar in Luba and Her Family. Luba’s and her cousin Ofelia’s relationship has always been fraught, but when Ofelia threatens to write a book about Luba, past memories, secrets, resentments, and pain resurface. Meanwhile, Luba’s children — genius Socorro, recently out-and-proud Doralis, and prickly Maricela — show that a talent for trouble may be hereditary. Luba’s sisters, Fritz and Petra, swap lovers (as usual), but … are Fritz and family friend Pipo sittin’ in a tree? These vividly drawn characters are charged with Hernandez’s trademark complexity; they live, love, age, fight– and die–in this sweeping, multi-generational saga.