Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a historical fiction about the lives of diverse persons melding an ethnogenesis that involves three separate cultures and their interactions, vicissitudes, and failings as they persevere during World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The central character is Louis Diamante Tellez, who is the only son of Lourdes Sandoval and Joseph Tellez. Lourdes is the oldest daughter of an opulent Mexican landowner and a Porfirio Diaz supporter during the Mexican Revolution that is being hunted by the rebels. The family is forced to flee to the Border town of Paso del Notre. Unfortunately, the father dies unexpectedly. The family is saved from becoming destitute because Lourdes, a twelve year old child, was able to smuggle 50 gold coins her father asked her to hide under her skirt. As a teenager working in a movie theatre, Lourdes meets and falls in love with Joseph, a Tigua Indian who previously served as a tracker for Black Jack Pershing and later enlists in the Army during WW I. He survived the war only to return to the Tigua Community in Ysleta del Sur to another miserable existence. The union is opposed by her mother, a haughty Iberian-Hispanic who considers Joseph inferior to Lourdes' family heritage. Despite her opposition, Joseph and Lourdes marry and they have a son, Louis. Joseph and Lourdes struggle economically throughout the Great Depression during which time Joseph finds jobs as an itinerant mechanic and she works as a manager of a movie theater. Joseph's sister, Flor, is married to the governor of the Tigua Community and they have a daughter, Rosalia, who is very close to Joseph. Rosalia is persuaded by Joseph to live with them to care for Louis (whom she calls "my Prairie Dog") as the couple continues making ends meet during the depression years. The major reason Rosalia decides to leave the Tigua community is because of an attack she endured as a 15 year old. Urbana, Joseph's mother, who is a Curandera, (healer) saved her life. Rosalia becomes Louis' surrogate mother and caretaker from the time he is eight years old and into his teenage years. The family survives the depression years and Louis enters the College of Mines to earn a degree in mining and chemistry, the first person in the family to achieve this goal. Louis meets a friend in college, Manfred Ordoñez, who introduces him to his father, a physician, who runs a medical clinic for indigent persons. Louis assists at the clinic and he decides he wants to become a medical doctor. Manfred teaches Louis how to apply mnemonics as a memory tool to help him throughout college. Louis successfully gets accepted to the medical school in Galveston, Texas during the beginning of WW II. Louis struggles financially and academically as he is stressed by the accelerated medical school program called forth by the war effort. In medical school, he meets his laboratory partner in anatomy, Izzy Schefter, a brilliant student who subsequently introduces him to his family. Izzy's father, Arthur, is a Jewish forensic pathologist who emigrated from Germany after being imprisoned in a Russian gulag during WWI. His wife, Madeline, is a doctoral student at Rice University and their daughter, Anne, is an accomplished violist who is a senior in the Torah Girls Academy. She is infatuated with Louis but the feeling is not reciprocated. Anne decides to attend U.C., Berkeley and study political science, giving up a career as a violist. The relationship between Louis and Anne remains close but tenuous because both have too many cultural and metaphysical differences and they decide to go their separate ways.
