PositiveNew York Times Book ReviewThis story is sprawling, multigenerational, the stuff of a Cecil B. DeMille epic; its settings range from dirt roads high in the mountains where the air is too thin to breathe to fecund rainforests to the war-torn West Bank ... Like any epic, it often lacks intimacy; we get to know Villanueva as a student, a teacher and a prophet, but not so much as a father, a husband or a man. Mochkofsky is no doubt aware of this; an endnote laments the \'preponderance of male voices in this book,\' a hazard of the decision to focus her narrative on the part of Villanueva’s life and community that largely excluded women. Even more unfortunate is that Villanueva’s voice is not among those featured ... Mochkofsky’s text, originally written in Spanish, seems to have lost lyricism in the sometimes awkward translation ... The most notable exclusion, however, is not a person, but an event: Here is a story of Jewish faith in which the Holocaust plays no part whatsoever ... And yet the narrative of displacement is no less compelling for it.
