A daughter’s quest to understand her charismatic and troubled father, an immigrant who crosses borders both real and illusory—between sanity and madness, science and spirituality, life and death.
With a potent combination of anguish and hope, a child’s faith and an adult’s cynicism, Guerrero’s search for answers further builds up the mystery surrounding this central figure in her life and explores the many borders, both physical and mystical, that her father transcends.
Guerrero's writing is expressive and affecting, especially in the moments where she grounds her reader in her own exploration of the mystical ... But there are moments where it slips into the melodramatic ... The book is deeply researched and tightly written.
Much like Guerrero’s lingering recollection of touching a cloud, Crux has a surreal, hallucinatory edge to it ... It is easy, however, to forgive Guerrero—digging into our resilient immigrant parents’ and grandparents’ pasts is a tricky, nasty business. It can be difficult, shameful even, to look directly at their humiliations and failures, yet Guerrero bares it all ... Just as the constellation Crux has guided countless sailors, at the end of her memoir, Jean Guerrero chooses the option that, however improbably, guides her safely to shore.
