This is the epic story of a woman who lived in a heat-swollen country but never becane one of its bloated survivors, keeping herself intact with her wit. Marquez tells her story with skillful humor, beginning through the everyday adventures of this woman's husband, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, art patron, professor of medicine, a leader in the fight against the cholera epidemics that ravaged the country. Her name is Fermina Daza, and she has forgotton that once she was not married, not in love with Dr. Urbino...

Marquez takes the reader from this beginning to a past where Fermina Daza is wooed by another, Florentino Ariza. Unlike Urbinoe, he is not the most sought-after suitor of his time, but one who instead admired Fermina's every step from afar, who wrote feverishly conceived poetry, and who claimed a vow of devotion for her then. He was hatefully dismissed but renewed his vow for Fermina at Dr. Urbino's tenebrous wake, fifty years, nine months, and four days later.

Florentino Ariza has not forgotten, waitin

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For Florentino, love's creature. this is an agonizing setback, though nothing fatal. Having sworn to love Fermina Daza forever, he settles in to wait for as long as he has to until she's free again. This turns out to be 51 years, 9 months and 4 days later, when suddenly, absurdly, on a Pentecost Sunday around 1930, Dr. Juvenal Urbino dies, chasing a parrot upon mango tree. After the funeral, when everyone else has left, Florentino steps forward with his hat over his heart "Fermina," he declares, "I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love." Shocked and furious, Fermina orders him out of the house. "And don't show your face again for the years of life that are left to you . . . I hope there are very few of them."

As a young woman, Fermina Daza kept a lengthy and passionate correspondence with Florentino Ariza, who was socially her inferior, but was desperately in love with her. They became engaged through their letters, exchanged through hiding places and telegrams in code.

, it comes as no surprise that, when they marry, they do so in the absence of love. Even as they consummate their marriage, Urbino remains ''aware that he did not love her,'' yet is "sure there would be no obstacle to their inventing true love," much like any other rational possibility.

g every year of her absense, every month of her obligation,

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Approximate Word count = 1010
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)