Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Her only friend is the house cleaner Chencha. Tita continues to live on the ranch, cooking for the family and caring for her mother. Unaffected by her own magical cooking, Tita returns home to find Nacha dead from grief over her lost fiancé. The sadness turns to nausea and many guests, including Rosaura, become violently ill. As the guests eat, a strange feeling comes over them, as each person is gripped by sadness over a lost love. Wracked with grief over her sister’s betrayal, Tita weeps while she prepares the wedding feast.

Pedro accepts, claiming he did so to remain close to Tita. Mama Elena offers Tita’s oldest sister, Rosaura, for Pedro to marry instead. At 16, Tita falls in love with her neighbor, Pedro, but when he asks for her hand in marriage, Mama Elena forbids it, claiming Tita must fulfill the family tradition of the youngest daughter staying home and caring for her mother. Tita displays a talent for culinary arts from an early age and soon finds the kitchen a place of refuge from Mama Elena’s temperamental moods. Nacha nourishes Tita with gruel and tea but also instills in the child a love of cooking.

Tita’s father dies of a heart attack just after her birth and her mother, Mama Elena, cannot nurse, Tita is charged to Nacha, the family’s octogenarian cook. Josefita “Tita” De la Garza is born crying as her mother chops onions in the kitchen of their family ranch in Mexico.

The novel is set in a northern Mexican village near the border during the Mexican Revolution, which took place in 1910-1920. Esquivel frames each month with a family recipe, which is worked into the chapter’s plot or themes. Like Water for Chocolate contains 12 chapters, one for each month of the year, though the timeline spans several decades. Content Warning: Like Water for Chocolate contains sensitive material such as depictions of physical abuse and sexual assault.

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel