Book Review: Randy Lopez Goes Home by Rudolfo Anaya

Northern villagers entertain notions of: 

• Agua Bendida ("Blessed Water") as Eden's long-lost Gihon or Pishon River; and 
• Saint Joseph (died July 20, A.D. 18) as New Mexico's hollyhocks (Alcea spp) gift-bearer. 

They nevertheless find Anglo, Hispanic, and Pueblo folklore and history cross-fired into the forty-seventh state, as epitomized by: 

• Miss Libriana, a Presbyterian first-grade schoolteacher, giving Agapita's and Juan Diego Lopez de la Cañada de Juan del Oso's son Mateo Melquiades Zacarías the Anglo name Randy; and
• the re-named Aqua Vendida ("Sold Water") and Hot Springs.

Randy therefore gets the idea of experiencing extra-backwater reality through: 

• naval service at Fort Bliss; 
• styling hair in Juárez;
• taking night classes; and 
• working in bookstores, construction, fast food, and landscaping. 

Randy has enough savings to buy a used laptop. He is on the way to Santa Fe to show a publisher My Life Among the Gringos when the express train hits a cow and sends the laptop out the window. He and his dachshund Oso ("Bear") journey on foot to the haunted canyon whose entrance keeper Todos Santos ("All Saints") provides a sway-back mare. He knows that: 

• anti-abortionist Angelica attends to the world's abused children;
• aromatherapist Lilith bemoans marigolds, flowers of the dead, replacing hollyhocks in dying amaranth, amaryllis, corn, cucumber, melon, pumpkin, tomato, tulip gardens; 
• Padre Polonio ("Father Polonius") confuses him with Levi Rael's sons; and
• wise woman Unica ("Unique") forages for mandrake (Mandragora spp) roots. 

Before the dead's dance, Randy learns that:

• Pedro Peñasco ("Peter Rocks") drowns nobody in Ríos de las Golondrinas, de los Tecolotes y del Oso ("Rivers of swallows, owls, and bear");
• prostitute Mabelline epitomizes kind-heartedness; and
• village mayor Todospedo ("dead-drunk") favors time-past travel. 

Ambulances merge upon train victims as Randy weighs life against afterlife. Carpentry-savvy José's ("Joseph") and María's ("Mary") Mexican immigrants nudge Randy toward bridge-building -- with Mountain of the Singing Trees' pines (Pinus ponderosa) -- over the River of Life to Sofia ("Wisdom") of the Lambs. 

Randy Lopez Goes Home offers cultural, educational, and philosophical engagement through: 

• Rudolfo Anaya's text; and 
• University of Oklahoma Press's 2013-released Chicana & Chicano Visions of the Américas series volume 12. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Villagers of northern New Mexico honor tradition against a backdrop of beautiful and stark landscapes.
northwestern New Mexico's Bisti Badlands/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area with unusual rock formations and Native American sacred places
Bisti (Navajo, "a large area of shale hills"); De-Na-Zin ("cranes"); San Juan County; Tuesday, March 16, 2010, at 19:44:47: John Fowler from Placitas, NM, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cracked_Eggs_(4441513843).jpg

Among nature's remedies familiar to Randy Lopez are anthropomorphic, hallucinogenic mandrake (Mandragora) roots.
anthropomorphic mandrake root (right) alongside partial view of Mandragora page in Tacuinem Sanitatis (1474): David Gil (Deivis), CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/deivis/1332530704/

New Mexico's floral landscapes cherish hollyhocks (Alcea spp) as spiritual heritage of gift-giver Saint Joseph.
"Black Hollyhock Blue Larkspur 1930"; oil on canvas by Georgia O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986)
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, 217 Johnson Street, downtown Santa Fe, north central New Mexico: jaygannett, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/45493331575/

Randy Lopez's ends his expatriate journey by returning to his roots on the Day of the Dead, festival and ritual traditions, tracing back anciently to pre-Columbian cultures, for remembering the departed.
Day of the Dead ofrenda ("offerings) in South Valley, Albuquerque, commemorate women killed in Juarez, Mexico area.: Glen Van Etten (Glen's Pics), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/tejedoro_de_luz/485141106/

"Meet Rudolfo Anaya" (2:24)
Uploaded July 13, 2015, by Open Road Media to YouTube ~ URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYhvpYcsLHQ

Anaya, Rudolfo. 2011. The Old Man's Love Song. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, Volume 9 Chicana & Chicano Visions of the Américas series edited by Robert Con Davis-Undiano. 

Hopkins, Gerard Manley. 1877. "The Windhover."

"Patricia Anne Anaya." Tributes.com: Obituary. Boston, MA: Tributes, Inc. Retrieved March 3, 2015. 

• Available at: http://www.tributes.com/show/Patricia-Anne-Anaya-87607574

"Rudolfo Anaya: Brief Bio." UNM: University Libraries > Research Guides > Biography. Retrieved March 3, 2015.

• Available at: http://libguides.unm.edu/content.php?pid=140582&sid=1349070

U.S. Census Bureau. (1940). “Patricia Lawless.” Department of Commerce -- Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940 Population Schedule.

• Retrieved for Elkhart City, Taloga Township, Morton County, Kansas, Household 227 Line 28 via Ancestry.com and HeritageQuest.com on March 3, 2015. 

Wolfe, Thomas. 1929. Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life.