Esperanza's Box of Saints

Mexican-American author Escandon offers an engaging, simply written novel that traces a woman's search for her beloved 12-year-old daughter. The tale begins with a miracle: on the day of her daughter's funeral, grief-stricken Esperanza Diaz is preparing pollo al chipotle for the funeral guests when San Judas Tadeo, the saint of desperate cases, appears in her grimy oven window ""like a pinata dangling from a rope"" to tell her that Blanca, who supposedly succumbed to an infection in the hospital after a tonsillectomy, is not dead. Esperanza immediately sets out on a dangerous, sometimes hilarious search for her lost child, leading the reader into a vibrant fictional realm. Esperanza's world is one in which a woman's skin tastes like tamarind candy, in which the statue of a saint glows and smells like lilacs and in which Esperanza's religious devotion has an aphrodisiac effect on the men she encounters. Despite the protests of her old friend Soledad and the concerns of her priest, who is disturbed by his intense attraction to her, Esperanza becomes convinced that Blanca was kidnapped by a doctor at the hospital and was forced into child prostitution. Esperanza's search takes her from a local brothel to Tijuana and then to Los Angeles; along the way, she encounters such zany characters as the eccentric, elderly Dona Trini, owner of a high-class brothel and keeper of a peculiar secret; the rich, lonely American Mr. Haynes, who pays Esperanza for nights of lullabies and conversation; Vicenza, a tough-talking businesswoman and die-hard wrestling fan; and, finally, the very human El Angel Justiciero, a professional wrestler with wings and a mask, who lands at Esperanza's feet and changes her life. Recounted alternately in first and third person, through her confessions, Blanca's diary and the prayers of the priest, Esperanza's charming journey, with its surprising conclusion, leads her out of grief into self-knowledge and reveals that the path of faith is often anything but straight and narrow. (Jan.) FYI: The novel is based on Escandon's Spanish-language screenplay, which has been bought by John Sayles.