Dreams of the Centaur by Montserrat Fontes

Product Details

Synopsis

With his bare hands and stubborn drive, Jose Durcal has built the ranch in Sonora where he and his family live. He dreams of a time when his sons will become powerful ranchers, but he is struck down through jealousy before he can make his dreams come true. When his oldest son, Alejo, avenges his father's murder, the boy sets his life in a direction that brings him face to face with evil. This fast-paced novel follows the rites of passage of Alejo through love, murder, prison, war, death, and regeneration. Told through the voices of Alejo and Felipa, his strong, independent mother, Dreams of the Centaur explores the unusual psychic tie between mother and son. Sustaining her family through all their troubles, Felipa binds her remaining sons to her, while, from a distance, she watches Alejo's soul harden. She fears for her son, who has always been her kindred spirit. She will summon all her strength and all the ferocity of a mother's love to save his life.

Annotation

Dreams of the Centaur brings to light for the first time in fiction the tragic enslavement of the Yaqui Indians by Porfirio Diaz's regime at the turn of the last century. Through the lives of the Ducals--a Mexican family who has created a ranch out of the desert--this "Western saga brimming with the heart and soul of Mexico . . . is an extraordinarily rich novel" (West Coast Review of Books). 352 pp.

Publishers Weekly

A "powerful and noteworthy" coming-of-age story set during the turn-of-the-century displacement of Mexico's Yaqui Indians. (Apr.)