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.
...a gracefully written and nuanced memoir ... One of the many merits of Guerrero’s penetrating examination of her family and its history is that it introduces readers to a multigenerational Mexican American family of the sort that often doesn’t appear in the headlines or on cable news ... You can set adrift in Guerrero’s prose, at times wondering where she is going and what she means. But with writing this luminous, this heartfelt and mystically charged, you really might not care that you’ve lost your way.
