New Orleans, 1853. A young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp. Years later, he will become the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas, but now he is as anonymous and invisible as any other migrant to the roiling and alluring city of New Orleans. Accompanied by a small group of fellow exiles who plot their return and hoped-for victory over the Mexican dictatorship, Juárez immerses himself in the city, which absorbs him like a sponge. He and his compatriots work odd jobs, suffer through the heat of a southern summer, fall victim to the cons and confusions of a strange young nation, succumb to the hallucinations of yellow fever, and fall in love with the music and food all around them. But unavoidable, too, is the grotesque traffic in human beings they witness as they try to shape their future.
The writing thrills to the racial and linguistic diversity of New Orleans, its roil of bodies and babel of noise. Mr. Herrera wonderfully captures Juárez’s bewilderment and awe when stumbling upon a Mardi Gras parade.
It is a testament to Yuri Herrera’s virtuosic talents that his new novel, Season of the Swamp, manages to breathe new life into a character who had long become a wax figure ... Muscular prose ... Vividly rendered ... I, for one, don’t feel inclined to reproach the author for preferring an accumulation of detail to the concatenation of events.
Evocative...crisply translated ... Brilliantly conveyed ... These vividly imagined encounters, Herrera suggests, helped fuel Juárez’s desire to emancipate his own people on his return to Mexico.
