La Maravilla
Alfredo Véa
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
4.17
· 6 ratings · 320 pages · Published: 01 Jan 1993
The vivid symbol of Buckeye Road is La Maravilla—the blanket of marigolds laid upon graves in Mexican cemeteries, and the mythical dog, sacred to the Aztecs, who returns from the under-world to lead his master to Mictlan, the land of the dead. La Maravilla is the embodiment of belonging to two worlds, and of being torn between the love and fear of both. It is the condition and mystery borne by all who inhabit this American outback—whether they are Blacks, Chicanos, Asians, Native Americans, Mexicans, European immigrants, or Anglo misfits. For Beto, the young boy at the center of this magnificent story, it is the dilemma that he must somehow resolve and emerge from whole. For Beto has no parents to guide him—his mother has fled the "old ways" of her Mexican family for a bright new American life beyond the desert sunset in California, where "Indians are history and Sunday is for football, not church!" But in her place, and more than filling it, is Beto's aristocratic Spanish grandmother, a Catholic curandera with a passion for the music of Duke Ellington. He also has his grandfather, a Yaqui Indian whose spirit soars above a desert without frontiers. With this extraordinary first novel, Alfredo Vea, Jr., takes his place in the first rank of America
Tagged as:
- fantasy 4
- magical realism 3
- historical 3
- historical fiction 3
- literary fiction 3
- protagonists of colour 2
- indigenous mc 2
- 20th century 2
- rural 2
- college/university 2
- coming of age 1
- funny 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- book 1
- adult fiction 1