The Day of the Moon

Lim n's commanding second novel, after her praised In Search of Bernab , follows four generations of the Betancourt family throughout five decades of Mexico's tumultuous political and social history. In 1906, with the luck of a gambler's hand, 26-year-old Don Flavio--son of a Spanish father and an Indian mother--wins land, wealth and power on one card game and begins a new life in the world of wealthy gringos. But his sudden nobility will have its price. Don Flavio's brutish treatment of Velia Carmelita, his new bride, sends her into the arms of Br gida, his gentle sister. Furious and confused to discover the two women are lovers, Don Flavio leaves the ranch in disgust. When he returns four years later, his wife is dead, his sister near-mad with grief, and he now has another female to control, his blonde little daughter Isadora. After she grows into a young woman, Isadora's love for Jer nimo Santiago (a Native Indian, and a member, like all indios, of the servant class) creates a furor in her family, dramatizing the hypocrisies of the Mexican upper class in dealing with the Indians who work their land. Don Flavio's disavowal of his own Indian mother, and his embracing of Spanish ""purity,"" haunts him throughout his life, and he inflicts his self-loathing and violent bigotry on his family's future generations. Alonda, his ""brown"" outcast grandchild, waits for Don Flavio's death to finally come to terms with her ethnic identity. Lim n contextualizes her saga with crucially placed details of Mexican political and social history, providing a sharp critique of the Mexican class system while embedding several passionate and eloquently rendered love stories. Through multiple points-of-view, this novel deftly explores one family's tragic reckoning with issues of cultural identity, sexual autonomy and interracial love. (May)