Family history—and the lack thereof—sparks this vaporous meditation on time, memory, and Chicano heritage. Having traced his father's Mexican-Indian and mestizo roots in Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation
, Santos here investigates the Lopez and Vela clans on his mother's side, descended from aristocratic Spanish immigrants who settled the Rio Grande territory in the 18th century. Unfortunately, the Lopez-Vela branches lack the thick culture of his father's side; they are more genteel and assimilated into Anglo society and have few recollections of a past, which the author must reconstruct at a distance. Santos delves into their genealogy, peruses Spanish imperial archives, has his DNA analyzed, and unearths evidence of ancestors from Spain and perhaps even the Holy Land. But with little grounding in lived experience, the story spins away into abstraction and fantasy. The author often lapses into a turgid mysticism—“As mind is to body, so time is to world”—and intersperses a science fiction narrative about a time traveler called Cenote Seven, who pontificates on everything from conquistador arrogance to planetary magnetic fields. Santos gives his forebears no flesh-and-blood presence; they seem like figments of an overactive imagination. Photos. (Apr. 5)
