Tita’s sister Gertrudis runs away with a captain of the rebel army. As the novel progresses, the war begins to affect their lives in intimate ways. It makes trade and imports difficult, and stories of violence are told as if they were happening far away. At the beginning of the novel, the war has a minimal impact on the character’s lives. Most of the novel is set during the Mexican Revolution, a revolution against established rule which went on from about 1910-1920 and also took on aspects of a civil war. She is currently divorced and continues to live in Mexico City.

In 2012, Esquivel ran and was elected as the Morena party’s Federal Representative to the Mexican government. Esquivel has also worked as a politician since 2008. Her works include her memoir, Between Two Fires (1995), as well as The Law of Love (1996), Intimas Suculencías (1998), Estrellita Marinera (1999) Libro de las Emociones (2000), Swift as Desire (2001), Malinche (2006), Pierced by the Sun (2016) and El Diario de Tita (2016). She has written and published continually since then. The novel became popular internationally, and was adapted to film in 1992. She began writing for television, and in 1989 she wrote her first and best-known novel, Like Water for Chocolate.

She married director Alfonso Arau in 1975. She started her writing career by writing stories and plays for her students to perform. Esquivel first worked as a kindergarten teacher.

Laura Alicia Palomares Esquivel was born in Mexico City, Mexico, the daughter of César Esquivel and Josefa Valdés.

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