So far from God : a novel /
Tome is a small, outwardly sleepy hamlet in central New Mexico. In Ana Castillo's hands, though, it stands wondrously revealed as a place of marvels, teeming with life and with all manner of collisions: the past with the present, the real with the supernatural, the comic with the horrific, the...
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| Language: | English |
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New York :
W.W. Norton,
©1993.
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Table of Contents:
- Account of the first astonishing occurrence in the lives of a woman named Sofia and her four fated daughters; and the equally astonishing return of her wayward husband
- On Caridad's holy restoration and her subsequent clairvoyance: Both phenomena questioned by the doubting Tomases of Tome
- On the subject of Dona Felicia's remedios, which in and of themselves are worthless without unwavering faith; and a brief sampling of common ailments along with cures which have earned our curandera respect and devotion throughout war and peace
- Of the further telling of our clairvoyant Caridad who after being afflicted with the pangs of love disappears and upon discovery is henceforth known as La Armitana
- Interlude: On Francisco el Penitente's first becoming a santero and thereby sealing his fate
- Renewed courtship of Loca's mom and dad and how in '49 Sofia got swept off her feet by Domingo's Clark Gable mustache, despite her familia's opinion of the charlatan actor
- Caridad reluctantly returns home to assume a life as what folks in "Fanta Se" call a channeler
- What appears to be a deviation of our story but wherein, with some patience, the reader will discover that there is always more than the eye can see to any account
- Sofia, who would never again let her husband have the last word, announces to the amazement of her familia and vecinos her decision to run for la mayor of Tome
- Wherein Sofia discovers La Loca's playmate by the acequia has an uncanny resemblance to the legendary Llorona; the ectoplasmic return of Sofi's eldest daughter; Fe falls in love again; and some culinary advice from La Loca
- Marriage of Sofia's faithful daughter to her cousin, Casimiro, descendant of sheepherders and promising accountant, who, by all accounts, was her true fated love; and of her death, which lingers among us all heavier than air
- Of the hideous crime of Francisco el Penitente, and his pathetic calls heard throughout the countryside as his body dangled from a pinon like a crow-picked pear; and the end of Caridad and her beloved emerald, which we nevertheless will refrain from calling tragic
- Final farewell of Don Domingo, sin a big mitote; and an encounter with un doctor invisible, or better known in these parts as a psychic surgeon, who, in any case, has no cure for death
- Dona Felicia calls in the troops who herein reveal a handful of their own tried and proven remedios; and some mixed medical advice is offered to the beloved Doctor Tolentino
- La loca Santa returns to the world via Albuquerque before her transcendental departure; and a few random political remarks from the highly opinionated narrator
- Sofia founds and becomes la first presidenta of the later-to-become world-renowned organization M.O.M.A.S.; and a rumor regarding the inevitability of double standards is (we hope) dispensed with.