Jamie Anderson said, “Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot.” Naturally, a story that revolves around grief is also one that revolves around love. On the Wings of la Noche draws this connection between these two very intense emotions wonderfully, introducing us to a character who tragically lost her first love and must navigate a world without her person.
Estrella Villanueva, best known as Noche, witnesses the death of her girlfriend Dante on a cold winter night at Lake Superior. Since then, Noche doesn’t know how to adapt to a life without Dante, especially since she is not entirely gone. Dante’s spirit still roams the earth, and Noche knows this because she is the one responsible for it.
Noche is a Lechuza, a young woman who transforms into an owl at night and delivers souls to the afterlife; however, her duty becomes more complex after the love of her life requires her services. Noche is incapable of saying goodbye to Dante’s soul, so they spend their nights by the lake that swallowed her lover’s body, conversing in their ethereal forms. During the day, Noche must go back to school and experience life without Dante, but she is able to withstand it because of the promise of seeing her love again at night. Unfortunately, Dante’s soul is more and more dispersed with every encounter, and Noche doesn’t know how to stop her from fading.
Besides the one with Dante, Torres introduces the reader to other relationships pivotal to Noche’s life. The one with her childhood best friend, Julien, who carries many secrets and is affected by Dante’s death too; the one with her new biology class’s lab partner, Jax, who makes her heart flutter in ways she had forgotten; and the one with her parents, who know about her Lechuza-self but can’t understand much of what she is going through. Every single connection is fundamental for our main character’s growth and navigation through grief. Torres develops each of Noche’s interactions organically, even with the awkwardness of a 17-year-old, making readers feel immediately drawn to all the characters.
“With this, the author reminds readers of the importance of allowing ourselves to grieve and surrender to the things we cannot change. ”
The most crucial connection, however, is between Noche and her Lechuza persona. The immense loss she faces makes her question her own identity. Noche is Dante’s girlfriend, Julien’s best friend, Jax’s lab partner, and her parent’s daughter, but who is she outside all these relationships? Noche can’t ignore how alone she feels inside her feathers, knowing nobody in her circle could fully understand her experience. Besides, the lines between her owl and human self begin to blur, and Noche can’t tell where Estrella ends and her Lechuza begins. This conflict of identity is a great device that Torres uses to show us that our main character is not only grieving Dante but also her life before becoming a Lechuza, creating a beautiful exploration of self-acceptance. With this, the author reminds readers of the importance of allowing ourselves to grieve and surrender to the things we cannot change.
On the Wings of la Noche is a conversation about forgiveness, identity, and reconciliation, explored by a 17-year-old shapeshifter facing a heartbreaking tragedy. Torres will make you believe in love again while holding your hand through a journey of immense grief. It aches, it makes you blush, it makes you cry, it makes you laugh. Her prose drives you through all the inevitable and necessary emotions one feels when one loves, the ones that make us human—the same ones that make Noche human even when spreading her wings at night.
Roxanna Cardenas Colmenares is a Venezuelan writer living in New York City who loves to consume, study, and create art. She explores multiple genres in her writing, with a special interest in horror and sci-fi, while working on her B.A. in English with a Creative Writing concentration.
Her work has made her a two-time recipient of the James Tolan Student Writing Award for her critical essays analyzing movies. She has also won The Henry Roth Award in Fiction, The Esther Unger Poetry Prize, and The Allan Danzig Memorial Award in Victorian Literature.
In her free time, she likes to watch movies, dance, and draw doodles that she hopes to be brave enough to share one day.
