The Possession of Alba Díaz
Isabel Cañas


​Isabel Cañas’ latest, “The Possession of Alba Díaz,” is her third novel and the “grisliest one yet,” according to the author’s dedication. The protagonist, Alba, is an 18th-century mixed-race woman adopted into a wealthy family, who schemes to gain control over her regimented life. But, instead of finding the freedom she yearns for, Alba is possessed by a malevolent demon after walking into the silver mine where she was abandoned as a baby.

As is her tradition, Cañas intertwines the history of México, or Nueva España (New Spain), with the gender rules that govern women and racist structures based on colorism and anti-indigenism. Within this context, Cañas gives us a protagonist who does not go meekly into the dark night. Indeed, Alba fights with tireless determination not only the rules that constrain her but also wrestles against her demonic possession in new and surprising ways. After taking on the sentient house trope in “The Hacienda” (2022) and vampiric colonialists in “Vampires of El Norte” (2023), Cañas does not disappoint with Alba Díaz, her most embattled but strongest heroine yet.

To prevent the fate of being married off for money, Alba colludes with Carlos, a childhood friend and the heir to the fortune of the Monterrubio family, who owes Alba’s father a substantial amount of money. Having confided in her as a child that he would “never want to marry a girl,” Carlos becomes the target of the deal Alba concocts to free herself from being sold for silver to a “sweaty handed” “groping” man.

While the novel is slow to get going, the pace picks up once Alba meets Elías, the part-“Moor” alchemist who is Carlos’ cousin, and whose shady past (as a former convict) and unrelenting search for riches in mercury mining have haunted him all his life. Alba and Elías first connect outdoors in the dark while they are both seeking solitude away from relatives at a wedding, but when they meet again under the lights of the ballroom, the illicit romance is kindled. 
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Once Alba arrives at the hacienda de minas, and similar to the experience of Cañas’ heroine, Beatriz, in “The Hacienda,” she has a physical reaction to the place and begins to hear “A susurration flitted around her awareness like the cold in the wind; it settled somewhere behind one ear, pressing like ice, like a dagger, against the tender skin there. Its edge cradled a threat,” telling her to “Leave” and “Get out.” A foray into the mine, however, in search of what she hears as a baby crying, becomes a full-fledged possession by a demon, who we learn has singled her out since birth. The demon, through Alba’s body, starts a killing spree, including attempting to kill Elías, but sets its sights on the priest, Bartolomé, who has traveled with them to the hacienda.

When possessed, Alba becomes the grizzly, bloodied puppet of the demon, with hollowed eyes and a maw meant to tear men’s throats apart. In the end, and without giving too much away, it is Elías' alchemical magic that helps Alba control the demon. As fellow “sinners” and two people who have had to scheme and bargain to survive, Elías and Alba are a couple very much in Cañas’ style of romance. 

Cañas also rewrites the demonic possession story, turning the tables so that Alba fights for the agency, if limited, to use the demon for her own purposes. Indeed, she is very clear that her body will not be the battlefield over which men, whether they be husband, lover, priests, or demon, will fight. 

Ultimately, it is through Elías that Alba learns how to set the demon free to feast on the Inquisition priests who have come to help Bartolomé with her exorcism and who, in the process, hurt Elías. Alba is no innocent child or meek victim of the demon; she is the captain of her soul, even as she wreaks bloody revenge on Inquisitors and wedding guests alike. It is also Elías, who, albeit unexpectedly, brings Alba back to herself. 

For fans of the rising Latinx cadre of horror writers, this is a fun read, especially because Cañas gives the reader a few plot twists at the end, which bring us to a satisfying ending. Mining and possession, mercury and silver, lust for riches and lust for freedom, are all alchemic ingredients in this novel, which continues Cañas’ winning streak as she challenges and refashions tropes in the U.S. gothic genre.
Isabel Cañas, a Mexican American speculative fiction writer, holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage.
Reviewed by
Ivonne M. García
9/9/2025
Ivonne M. García is the author of “Gothic Geoculture: Nineteenth-Century Representations of Cuba in the Transamerican Imaginary.” An English professor by training, she lives in Massachusetts.
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