Book Description
Paradise in Ashes is a deeply engaged and moving account of the violence and repression that defined the murderous Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s. In this compelling book, Beatriz Manz--an anthropologist who spent over two decades studying the Mayan highlands and remote rain forests of Guatemala--tells the story of the village of Santa María Tzejá, near the border with Mexico. Manz writes eloquently about Guatemala's tortured history and shows how the story of this village--its birth, destruction, and rebirth--embodies the forces and conflicts that define the country today.
Drawing on interviews with peasants, community leaders, guerrillas, and paramilitary forces, Manz creates a richly detailed political portrait of Santa María Tzejá, where highland Maya peasants seeking land settled in the 1970s. Manz describes these villagers' plight as their isolated, lush, but deceptive paradise became one of the centers of the war convulsing the entire country. After their village was viciously sacked in 1982, desperate survivors fled into the surrounding rain forest and eventually to Mexico, and some even further, to the United States, while others stayed behind and fell into the military's hands. With great insight and compassion, Manz follows their flight and eventual return to Santa María Tzejá, where they sought to rebuild their village and their lives.
Customer Reviews:
Really excellent book.......2006-11-04
I bought this to accompany me on a trip to Guatemala. Although it was painful to read, it absorbed me in the country's history in a very enriching way, and altered my perspective considerably. I highly, highly recommend this book.
Book Description
A brilliantly imagined, lavish, and transporting novel of a young womanÂ's search for the truth about her familyÂ's mythic past
Meg Mabry has spent her life with her back turned to her legendary family legacy. In the 1890s her great-grandmother Hannah Bass composed starkly revealing diaries of her life on the southwestern frontier, first as a Harvey Girl at the glamorous Montezuma Resort in New Mexico and later as the wife of brilliant, and often-absent, railway engineer Eliott Bass. A generation later, HannahÂ's daughter, Claudia Bass, renowned historian known to all as Bassie, staked her academic career and reputation on these vibrant accounts, editing and publishing them to great acclaim. Thanks to the journals and to the industry Bassie created around them, Hannah would forever be one of the most romantic and famous figures of southwestern history.
Meg, however—BassieÂ's granddaughter—finds the family lore oppressive. When an excavation on the old Bass family property beckons a now-elderly and viper-tongued Bassie back to the fabled land of her childhood, Meg only grudgingly consents to accompany her. Determined not to live under the shadow of her ancestry, Meg has never even read the journals. But when an unexpected discovery casts doubt on the history recorded in their pages and harbored in BassieÂ's memories, Meg finally succumbs to the allure of her great grandmotherÂ's story and ventures even deeper into HannahÂ's life to unlock the mystery at the journalÂ's core.
Reminiscent of Carol ShieldsÂ's The Stone Diaries and the novels of Anita Shreve, The Night Journal is an enthralling tale in which Indian ruins, majestic desert hotels, and the hardship and boldness of frontier life fit seamlessly with a modern-day story of coming to terms with loss, family secrets, and shattering truths that lie shrouded in memory.
Customer Reviews:
History trumps romance.......2007-07-27
There are at least two stories here. One is that of Hannah Troy Bass, who came to New Mexico in the 1890s and left a series of journals which, as edited by her daughter Claudia ("Bassie"), became famous as an authentic record of frontier life. The other is the present-day tale of the now-elderly Bassie returning to New Mexico with her thirty-something granddaughter Meg to supervise some archaeological excavations around her mother's old home. For a long time, the older story is more interesting than the modern one; Hannah's voice speaks from the page with an immediacy that makes Meg pale by comparison. It is clear that a lot of research has gone into this, and the reader is caught up in historical events as in the trivia of daily life.
About halfway through the book, there is a gear change and the modern story takes center stage. But the transition is poorly handled, many of the revelations are predictable, and the genre shifts uncomfortably between historical novel, romance, mystery story, and -- perhaps most interesting -- a study of the bonds and tensions within families. These may be too many balls for the author to juggle. I found myself getting interested in Meg and her feelings only to end in frustration, and the final sections of Hannah's journal make for very unpleasant reading that no amount of plot resolution can make palatable.
One can understand the recent popularity of books that confront present-day characters with records from a past age.* The device expands the scope and implications of the novel, allowing the author to write about people whose lives have something in common with those of the readers, without reducing the whole action to a humdrum level. It also addresses one of the prime functions of the modern novel, which is to make sense of the present existence in relation to the past. But it is also a difficult structure to bring off, without making one narrative seem constructed merely as a prop for the other one, or allowing the more vivid of the two to eclipse the paler. The danger can be reduced by strong characters and meticulous research, but good history always trumps merely competent fiction.
*Some examples, almost at random: John Darnton's THE DARWIN CONSPIRACY, Umberto Eco's THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME OF QUEEN LOANA, Janathan Safran Foer's EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, Dara Horn's THE WORLD TO COME, Nicole Krauss' THE HISTORY OF LOVE, and Jennifer Vanderbes's EASTER ISLAND (probably the closest parallel to THE NIGHT JOURNAL).
I must have missed something.......2007-07-25
This novel reads like a second rate mass market dimestore romance. The journal references are unbelievably contrived, and the thin plot is padded with uneccessary and uninteresting copy. Where was the editor? I am an avid reader, but cannot imagine how this novel can appeal to anyone who enjoys reading well-crafted, provocative material. Although I am on page 292, I will probably abandon this book in favor of Cormac McCarthy's new book "The Road", that I purchased the same day. I am angry with myself for wasting as much time on it as I have already.
rich characters, a lush landscape, an intriguing mystery and a possible romance..........2007-05-30
In the recent film Notes on a Scandal, one of the characters remarks that "we are bound by the secrets that we keep." That sentiment is tailor-made for the women of Elizabeth Crook's THE NIGHT JOURNAL. Each generation of the Bass family has their secrets and passes them on to the next generation. Claudia "Bassie" Bass, headstrong writer and historian, is the daughter of Hannah Bass, known for her seminal journals of a young woman's life in the Southwest that have become classics worldwide. Since Hannah died when Bassie was a child, these journals were the only way she came to know her mother.
Meg Mabry, Bassie's 37-year-old granddaughter, has always cringed under the spotlight of her family's famous heritage and has never read the journals themselves: "Bassie had built her life around them [the journals], and founded her career on them as a professor of southwestern history, transforming them into these six published volumes that had become, through the years, a kind of cult literature for lovers of the American West and the Victorian era. Bassie worshiped her mother and the journals. But for Meg they were a source of embarrassment, documenting the story of an ancestor whose life had been more dramatic and interesting than Meg could ever hope hers would be."
When Bassie learns of a new addition being built on the land of her mother's home in New Mexico, which has now become a museum, she insists that the family dogs are buried there and they must be exhumed and moved before the building can begin. Bassie is determined to travel to the family homestead to oversee the operation, and Meg reluctantly decides to accompany her. Upon their arrival in New Mexico, they meet up with Jim Layton, an archeologist who runs the museum and is in charge of the exhumation of the bones. Jim has known Bassie for years and knows just how to finesse her prickly personality; he soon finds that he has a great deal in common with the more reticent Meg.
Perhaps it's because she finds herself surrounded by her family's history that Meg relents and begins reading Hannah's journals. Meg learns of her great-grandmother's journey from Chicago to the Southwest, her work as a Harvey girl, her marriage to railroad worker Elliot Bass, and the establishment of the homestead at Pecos. But when the excavation turns up human bones, everything that was known about the family is called into question.
Elizabeth Crook, author of THE RAVEN'S BRIDE and PROMISED LANDS, deftly blends historical fiction and mystery as she tells the story of four generations of women in the American Southwest. The passages from Hannah's journals illuminate the experience of a young woman in untamed country, trying to carve out a new life for herself and feeling conflicted over two important men in her life. The modern-day story of Meg, her indomitable grandmother and their "push-me, pull-you" relationship, as well as Meg's flirtation with the married but troubled Jim, is endearing and realistic. Both Meg and Jim have something to prove to Bassie and try not to buckle under her strong hand: "Some of us are living the lives she wanted us to, and some of us are living the lives we chose in defiance of her wishes. But her influence is still there." Add to this potent brew the element of mystery in the form of the unearthed body on Dog Hill, which calls all of Hannah's and Bassie's accounts into question.
With rich characters, a lush landscape, an intriguing mystery and a possible romance, THE NIGHT JOURNAL grips the reader from the start. As the story alternates from the 1800s to the modern day, it paints an accurate and entertaining picture of life as the Bass women lived it.
--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller
A look into the past.......2007-05-24
The Night Journal describes the rare opportunity for a member of the current generation to look at her family's past -- their personalities, the times they lived in and most of all their secrets. I was uncertain how I would like the book at first as the main character, Meg, is not really all that likeable. She's an angry young woman, cut off from her own feelings and still rebelling against her mother and grandmother. It wasn't really all that easy to like her grandmother, Bassie, either, but as secrets were revealed through Meg's great-grandmother Hannah's journals, I came to care about them all inspite of their faults. I liked it that everything wasn't fixed and perfect at the end of the story. It has a good, satisfying ending and not the happily ever after ending that would have been so tempting to write.
Absorbing, but not captivating..........2007-05-03
What in heck does that mean? The story, supported by well-developed, but not always likable characters, was fresh and intriguing in varying degrees throughout. The settings were real and came alive through very satisfying description. Intriguing in varying degrees - one moment, I was reading with purpose, the next, I was quite content to put the book down - and not return to the story for days. What does that say? It wasn't moving fast enough; it wasn't delivering enough mystique to keep me turning pages. I enjoyed the story. I got a bit tired of Bassie's consistently cantankerous behavior - well-explained, to be sure, but tiring in the reading experience. Oh, to see more of her softer side and less of poor Meg's hopelessness.
You know how you feel when you've read a real humdinger? You can't wait to tell your friends about it, recommend it to friends of like appetite - and in my case, to file it on that special shelf of "keepers", to be re-read in my old age. Not this one, I'm afraid. After reading that last page, I was consumed with the opinion that this story could have been told in about 100 less pages. Some people love it when the author uses 1000 words to describe something that could benefit just as well from a well chosen 50. Not me - so I'm feeling relieved to have finished The Night Journal so I can move on to something more stimulating...and captivating!
Book Description
The government-sanctioned killing of student protesters in Mexico City on October 2, 1968, continues to haunt the city and the nation. Elaine Carey's Plaza of Sacrifices is the first English-language book-length study to situate this watershed event in an analytic framework. She provides a gendered analysis of the protest movement that culminated in the killing of as many as 700 students (estimates are still disputed) and looks at the movement's ongoing effects on relations between the state and the individual, between parents and children, and between men and women in Mexico.
Carey traces the trajectory of political and social protests in Mexico City during the summer and early fall of 1968, the tension-filled days of street marches and campus takeovers that gave way to violence. The protestors were students from the middle classes questioning the fundamental assumption of an authoritarian, paternal, centralized state. Their critique of the system dismayed the ruling elite and embarrassed the government because it coincided with the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.
Carey shows that the Mexican student protesters were part of an ongoing critique of the failed promises and corrupted ideals of the Mexican Revolution half a century earlier. The government deemed politicized young men as dangerous because they embraced certain foreign influences while resisting co-option into the ruling party. Women, on the other hand, were not seen in such a politicized way. By their mobilization in the movement, however, young women challenged traditional concepts of their proper place within Mexican society and the movement. Carey details the roles and lives of activists to show how the events of 1968 shaped contemporary Mexico.
On October 2, 1968, up to 700 students were killed by government authorities while protesting in Mexico City - many of them women. This analysis of the role of women in the protest movement shows how the events of 1968 shaped modern Mexican society.
Customer Reviews:
One Sided.......2006-04-23
The author did an outstanding job presenting the student's side. However, she didn't offer enough insight into the other side. Perhaps the Mexican executive branch couldn't promise to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the initial police brutality.
While writing a paper on "The 1968 Mexican Student Movement" for a graduate class I came across a more balenced account from Donald J. Mabry of Misissippi State University.
Customer Reviews:
A compelling story.......2003-07-06
This is a compelling story. Judge H. C. McComas and his wife, Juniata, were brutally murdered by a band of Chiricachua Apaches while traveling on the road from Silver City to Lordsburg, New Mexico, on March 28, 1883. Their six-year-old son Charley, traveling with them, was carried away by the Indians and never found, despite long and determined efforts to learn of his whereabouts. For many years, the McComas story remained an obscure footnote to the long history of the Apache Wars in the Southwest. Simmons has rescued it from its obscurity in this fine book.
The detail that Simmons brings to the McComas story is remarkable, considering the difficulties he must have encountered in his research. He has, I think, considered the story from every possible angle, speculating where the facts are not definitely known (many are not), but laying his speculations on a firm foundation of facts. The story is, of course, incredibly sad, and the Chiricahuas do not come off well in the telling. But the book is far from an anti-Indian screed. Simmons is sensitive to the Indians' cultural milieu and lifestyle, even if they are not in all respects admirable. The book ends with a description of the 1994 funeral of the celebrated Apache sculptor Allan Houser. Houser's Chiricahua father, Sam Haozous, was ten-years-old and an apprentice warrior when he rode with the Indians who attacked the McComas family in 1883. For many years, he and his son carefully guarded the dark secret of his youthful involvement in the atrocity. But Allan Houser related his father's recollections of the incident to Simmons not long before his death. Simmons came to Houser's funeral with an appreciation of the sculptor's artistic accomplishments and a sensitivity to the Chiricahua legacy that he represented.
Highly recommended!
Book Description
The series debut of Native-American psychologist Ben Pecos, who returns home to find his Tewa Pueblo in the fatal grip of a mysterious epidemic and his heart falling for a beautiful television reporter there to cover the story.
Customer Reviews:
A good mystery debut.......1999-10-22
Ben Pecos has a mixed heritage. His father is Anglo, while his deceased mother was Native American. Most of his life has been spent in the Anglo world culminating in his graduating from Stanford. Surprisingly, Ben accepts an internship working for Dr. Sanford Black at the Albuquerque Indian Health Service Unit. His home station is the Tewa Pueblo where his grandmother lives.
On the Pueblo, several senior citizens suddenly die, but no one seems concerned. However, that changes when healthy younger Indians die. Panic surfaces, as an epidemic appears to be on the precipice. TV reporter Julie Conlin covers the deadly outbreak. She works with Ben to solve the mystery of the virus that is killing the residents of the pueblo.
THE PUMPKIN SEED MASSACRE is an entertaining Native American mystery that centers on a man-made killer virus linked to casino interests. The atmospheric story line captures the diversity of New Mexico while providing insight into a Native American culture. Ben and Julie are an intriguing pair of amateur sleuths, who seem capable of carrying the plot. The fracturing of various points of view occasionally leaves the audience disconnected. Still Susan Slater provides an enjoyable debut that will have sub-genre readers wanting more appearances from Ben and Julie.
Harriet Klausner
Average customer rating:
- What really hapend in guatemalan forest
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Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcan, Guatemala, 1975-1982
Ricardo Falla
Manufacturer: Westview Pr (Short Disc)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
| Central America
| Americas
| History
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Guatemala
| Central America
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| History
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Mexico
| Americas
| History
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Holocaust
| Jewish
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ASIN: 0813386691 |
Customer Reviews:
What really hapend in guatemalan forest.......2000-12-01
The author presents an excellent chronological description of the massacres happened in the region of Ixcan. Its form of narrative is full of examples like maps, tables and interviews with the survivors of the terrible war that underwent Guatemala.
Average customer rating:
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The Taos Massacres
John Durand
Manufacturer: Puzzlebox Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
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ASIN: 0974378305 |
Book Description
A well-written story that follows several real-life characters through the turmoil of the rebellion that rocked northern New Mexico in 1847. Supplemented by battle diagrams from the official military history of the campaign to put down the rebellion, and a first-ever chronology of events.
Customer Reviews:
History made live.......2004-01-16
Taos Massacres is a gripping story - Mr. Durand's writing is full of description, including details of smell and touch that I found made the experiences being described feel very real and personal.
The story itself, of what happened in New Mexico in those days is an interesting one and illustrative of so many issues in our country in those days - and today.
I also really liked the authors comments and suppositions about how the women in this story were affected or might have felt. Even the lack of mention of them while he narrated the mens stories was a statement about their importance in the men's thinking of the time. It rang true. There probably exists little record of that type of thing for one to draw on.
Small pieces of the book keep recurring to me - for me this is an indicator of a good book. The story of the two boys sitting on the hill talking about New Mexico becoming part of the US...the hispanic boys reaction and the white boys...subtle and a bit tense. The story of the chaos in the barn at Turley's mill.and the encounter of old friends in the hills that lead to betrayal.
All in all, a very enjoyable read that I'd strongly recommend.
I reserved the 5th star because I'd have loved to see more maps, photos and illustrations.
Average customer rating:
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Healing: Crucible Birth
Sherrie M. Steiner
Manufacturer: Hamilton Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
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Conservation
| Environment
| Outdoors & Nature
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General
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Reference
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ASIN: 0761831010 |
Book Description
In Healing, author Sherrie M. Steiner promotes social change to grapple with the global environmental problems that threaten our collective future. The book combines scientific and faith-based motives to compel the reader to participate in social renewal.
Books:
- Patrick Suppes: Scientific Philosopher: Volume 1: Probability and Probabilistic Causality Volume 2: Philosophy of Physics, Theory Structure and Measurement ... and Action Theory (Synthese Library)
- Post-Industrial East Asian Cities: Innovation for Growth
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Police Officers Report
- Prelude to Ascension (Tools for Transformation)
- Priceless : The Vanishing Beauty of A Fragile Planet
- Prolog Programming for Artificial Intelligence
- Protein Stucture and Function (PRIMER IN BIOLOGY)
- Random Walks in the Quarter-Plane: Algebraic Methods, Boundary Value Problems and Applications (Stochastic Modelling and Applied Probability)
- Relativity Simply Explained
- Research Methods: A Process of Inquiry (4th Edition)
Books Index
Books Home
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