The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez

The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez is a middle grade fantasy novel by Adrianna Cuevas and was published in 2020 by Farrar Straus Giroux. Cuevas’s debut novel follows a 12-year-old Cuban American boy named Nestor who uses his extraordinary gift of talking to animals to save his new home of New Haven, Texas, from the clutches of a malevolent tule vieja. Through Nestor’s coming-of-age journey, Cuevas imbues the story with her own Cuban American heritage, as the novel explores the challenging realities of growing up in a military family, the search for one’s place in the world, and the importance of cultural heritage and family legacy.

The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez was named one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2020 and was a 2021 Pura Belpré Honor Book.

This guide refers to the 2021 First Square Fish e-book edition.

Content Warning: This book contains themes of displacement and challenges of military family life, including references to military deployment in conflict zones, military weapons, and fatality.

Plot Summary

Sixth grader Nestor Lopez is all too used to moving around. As the son of Sergeant First Class Raúl Lopez, an explosive ordnance disposal specialist in the US Army, Nestor has already lived in five places—Georgia, Colorado, Washington, Kentucky, and Texas. However, when his father deploys to Afghanistan, Nestor’s mother decides to move the family off-base to live with Nestor’s Abuela—his paternal grandmother—in the small town of New Haven, Texas.

While Nestor is happy to live with Abuela in a house that is actually a home, compared to military housing, it isn’t any easier to pack up and leave yet another school just as he was finally starting to make friends. Nestor invents a trick to help make these moves easier: He never completely unpacks. There are two things, however, that he is always sure to unpack: his father’s old Army compass and the sketchbook Nestor takes everywhere. In it, he sketches animals he meets and counts how many days he’s lived in one place.

The first thing Nestor notices about New Haven is that the wildlife is talkative and even a bit annoying. Nestor knows this because he has a secret ability—he can talk to and understand animals. While Nestor is hopeful that his Abuela might share his gift, he doesn’t realize she does until later in the novel. What Abuela does share with Nestor is a Cuban cultural heritage and a knowledge of what it’s like to have to start over in a new place. Abuela emigrated from Cuba at age 14, leaving behind her family to start over in the US. She cooks Cuban food, watches telenovelas, and listens to Cuban singer Celia Cruz. When she says goodbye to Nestor, Abuela has a tradition of saying “Chao, Pescao,” a saying that references ration cards used in Cuba.

Nestor’s first day at New Haven Middle School is his 10th first day of school, so he thinks he knows the drill. He quickly befriends two classmates—Talib and Maria Carmen—who share Nestor’s proclivity for animal and science trivia, and he finds himself already a target of a school bully named Brandon. However, his new school turns out to be much stranger than he could ever expect, especially the talk of missing animals in the town. Talib recently lost his dog, and Maria Carmen’s goats suddenly went missing, leaving behind a trail of pink ear tags that lead to the woods. Whatever is responsible for these disappearances has the town spooked. There’s talk that there might be a witch in the woods—a witch that Brandon is in cahoots with.

As Nestor adjusts to New Haven, his friends convince him to join the trivia club. The club is spearheaded by Nestor’s science teacher, Miss Humala, whose moments of kindness are overshadowed by a stern demeanor. Nestor spots Miss Humala talking to a snake at one of the trivia club competitions—a snake that turns out to be a malevolent, witch-like creature called a tule vieja and also Miss Humala’s mother. To make things worse, the people of New Haven are beginning to gossip, suspecting that Nestor’s Abuela is the one responsible for the animal disappearances since she has been spotted running into the woods.

Nestor longs to talk to his father about all these strange happenings and get his advice, but Nestor knows he has to avoid any negative topics in letters or video calls with his dad. As his mother says, Nestor must remain “happy” and “positive” when his dad is deployed so as not to distract him from his job.

With the town’s animals in danger and Nestor’s Abuela taking the blame, Nestor must decide if he’ll reveal his secret ability—an ability that might help Nestor save the day. However, when a deer finds Nestor in the woods and tells him his Abuela is injured and needs his help in front of Talib and Maria Carmen, Nestor reveals his secret in order to help Abuela. Instead of judgment, he finds acceptance from his friends and learns that Abuela can speak to animals, just like Nestor. In fact, Abuela has been using her ability to help save animals being targeted by the tule vieja. With Abuela injured, Nestor must take on the task of saving the animals and stopping the tule vieja before the solar eclipse, a celestial event that activates her ability to steal animals’ powers for her own. The eclipse will be passing over New Haven in just a few days.

Nestor, Talib, and Maria Carmen dive further into figuring out how to stop the tule vieja. Brandon’s father suddenly goes missing, taken by the tule vieja in retaliation for Brandon refusing to help her any longer. Brandon joins forces with Nestor and his friends, bringing new knowledge and strategy to the group. Nestor plans to lean on his Abuela for help as well, but he finds her missing—also taken by the tule vieja. It’s up to Nestor and his friends—and an ensemble of local animals—to save the day.

As the solar eclipse reaches totality, Nestor battles the tule vieja. The tule vieja tries to attack Nestor and steal his power, knowing that taking Nestor’s gift of talking to animals would make her truly unstoppable. However, Nestor and the animals manage to stop the tule vieja in the nick of time, throwing her over a cliff. They also free all the stolen animals, restoring New Haven to normal.

At the end of the novel, Nestor enjoys a picnic with his friends, following another win with the trivia club. Despite all the excitement and challenges he’s faced, Nestor is finally ready to call New Haven “home.” He even manages to unpack all of his belongings.