Vacation Reading

When we travel, we allow for downtime, usually by late afternoon and early evening.  This gives us plenty of time for reading.  While in Costa Rica, H read The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett while I read The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea.  I chose my book because of its Latin American setting.  It's historical fiction about the Mexican saint Teresita of Cabora.  Urrea has some kind of familial relationship with this "Queen of the Yaquis" who healed the sick and was also "considered a heretic by the Catholic church and an Indian agitator and political rabbit-rouser by the government of Mexico at a time when both the United States and Mexico were oppressing and exterminating large numbers of Native people."


While this book does have some elements of magical realism, it reads quite differently, although the prose is lovely, too, than Garcia Marquez and Allende, perhaps because of all of the research Urrea poured into it.