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A Tejano Elegy
by John Phillip Santos
In his acclaimed 1999 memoir Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation, John Phillip Santos told the story of one Mexican family - his father's - set within the larger story of Mexico itself. In this beautifully written new book, he tells of how another family - this time, his mother's - erased and forgot over time their ancient origins in Spain.
Every family has a forgotten tale of where it came from. Who is driven to tell it and why? Weaving together a highly original mix of autobiography, conquest history, elegy, travel, family remembrance, and time traveling narration, Santos offers an unforgettable testimony to this calling and describes a lifelong quest to find the missing chronicle of his mother's family, one that takes him to various locations in South Texas and Mexico, to New York City, to Spain, and ultimately to the Middle East. Blending genres brilliantly, Santos raises profound questions about whether we can ever find our true homeland and what we can learn from our treasured, shared cultural legacies.
"Santos's work is an intensive reckoning of personal dimensions...A Tejano Hesiod grapples with ancestors known and invisible." - Kirkus Reviews
"Santos gives his forebears no flesh-and-blood presence; they seem like figments of an overactive imagination." - Publishers Weekly
"Santos' novel is brimming with historical details, which he poetically enriches with myth, dream sequences, and conversations with helpful ghosts." - Booklist
This information about The Farthest Home Is in an Empire of Fire was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Phillip Santos is the author of Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation, a finalist for the National Book Award. His articles on Latino art, culture, and politics have appeared in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. A former writer and produced of television documentaries for CBS and PBS, he is also a poet and the recipient of numerous literary awards.
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