Finding Cristina: Treasures on Earth

by Emilia Rosa

Rating: ****

Finding Cristina: Treasures on Earth is the third installment in Rosa’s Finding Cristina series*. It’s 1933, Cristina is thirty and now has three children with husband, Robert. Together with their extended, blended family members, they’ve relocated to an idyllic smallholding in southern Brazil, the land of the Gaúchos.   

However, Cristina’s charmingly rustic existence begins to be threatened by unexplained acts of sabotage, revenge missions, and missing children…

Rosa has previously drawn on her background for the Finding Cristina novels, but with Treasures on Earth, she brings her paternal family’s rich South American heritage to prominence but with consideration, not exclusivity.

She shares its traditions, folklore, and topography absorbingly with the reader while beautifully utilizing it as the framework and primary setting for her narrative. She brings the farmhouse and its landscape vibrantly to life. It’s wonderfully bucolic, earthy, and intimate, with deft personal touches that are sweetly endearing and a subtle yet steady flow of interesting socio-historical detailing to ensure authenticity.

The reader is plunged straight into this picturesque Brazilian Arcadia with Cristina, Robert, et al. It’s a touch haphazard at first, albeit delightfully so. Nonetheless, Rosa provides an invaluable cast list at the rear of the book and threads pertinent backstory elements through the opening chapters.

Still, the deliciously entertaining character vignettes add layers to the narrative, which begins to sharpen. There is no central plot, as such, in Treasures on Earth, but rather three separate, emerging storylines.

The first involves deliberate ‘accidents,’ and the reader is confident about who is responsible. Rosa puts this whodunit on the back burner for most of the novel and focuses on Cristina’s abrupt departure to Rio de Janeiro to discover what has happened to Sonya, the woman who raised her. The trip rapidly descends into chaos due to the return of two individuals from her past.

At this point, the narrative splits between Cristina in Rio and Robert, who is organizing a welcome party at the farm. Rosa keeps all these sidelines capably spinning, even adding a further issue between Robert and the objectionable son of one of the neighbors, Sergio.

It could have become a little bewildering, but it doesn’t; Rosa maintains keen focus and continuity in each area while making the various narratives appear relaxed and freighted with lazy amusement from the characters concerned.

Cristina’s trajectory in Rio is possibly the only area that strays briefly into the realms of the fanciful. Notwithstanding, Rosa’s writing has such a warm, lively tone, and Cristina is so characteristically non-plussed by her death-defying events that it reads as an infectious slice of amusing mayhem.

Rosa then serves up a compelling and comprehensive historical mystery toward the novel's end, as Cristina and Robert’s eldest son, Donny, and his cousin, Anne-Marie, both eight years old, embark on a hunt for the Templars' treasure, rumored to be buried somewhere on the farm. This segues credibly into a search for the two children.

Rosa convincingly builds on the personalities from the two earlier books; Bunky and Rafael Souza are, again, especially well-portrayed. She also introduces new individuals with a sense of complete familiarity. The cameo appearance from her father, Gildo Rosa, was a nuanced, poignant addition.

Cristina and Robert occasionally frustrate in their sporadic self-absorption and seeming perfection. Although Robert is aware that practically every man who crosses Cristina’s path becomes besotted with her, he seems relatively unfazed. It would be interesting to see this casual attitude tested in future Cristina novels.

Notwithstanding, the captivating charm of Rosa’s books lies in their deceptively light-hearted, fun nature, which disguises the fairly weighty themes, ambitious plotting, and scrupulous levels of research.

Finding Cristina: Treasures on Earth is another thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable episode of bewitching Cristina escapism. Highly recommended.

*Click here for my review of Finding Cristina.

*Click here for my review of Finding Cristina: A New Life.

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