Wild Steps of Heaven

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Summary: Wild Steps of Heaven
Review: After reading Rain of Gold, an exceptional story, I couldn't wait to read this one. Wild Steps of Heaven tells more of Victor Villasenor's ancestral history, this time focusing on his grandfather's life as a young boy in Mexico. The book is very fast-paced and full of stories that are shocking in their violent imagery, yet show the importance of faith in God, love, and la familia.

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Summary: Epic Tale of Family Loyalty, Love, and Making of Heroes
Review: In times of hardship heroes are needed and none moreso than in Mexico as revolution rages. The Villasenor family patriarch, an exiled red-haired Spaniard, has married an Indian woman. The first ten years of the marriage are a time of great love and passion, and the children born first are fair and favor Don Juan Villasenor. Later children are dark like their mother. One of the dark ones, Jose, from age 12 must live in the barn because he defied his father and gentled a stallion to rescue his baby brother holding onto the leg rather than shoot the horse. In his exile and solitude a hero begins his training with Grandfather Don Pio Castro who knows Jose understands the power of love and gentleness. This will be the son who defends la familia during the revolution from the soldiers who time and again attach the village. The colonel commanding the troops more particularly desires Jose's true love Mariposa and destroys her. Ultimately, the younger brother Juan (author Villasenor's father) begins to show heroic tendencies himself and will be the one to defend his mother and the remaining family against the colonel. Villasenor moves the tale along with a powerful, songlike cadence. Notable characters are the giant cousins, Basilio and Agustin, who strip naked and race the lightning and then Halley's comet on January 17, 1910, a night of magic and love, the day before el colonel begins shooting up the home village, el paraiso de Los Altos de Jalisco. Each chapter begins with epigrams featuring "Great Father Sun" that provide a sense of power from above, as in "the heavens smile . . . as all around him the gods and serpents did battle." When the final epigram tells us "and out of these children of the earth and of the stars would now come a glorious new gente in all their wonder and fire," we realize that while we have been traveling through an exciting story with more twists and turns than fiction, we also have been participating in something approximating a creation myth. Highly recommended is Villasenor's first tale of the family Villasenor, Rain of Gold.

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Summary: Wild Steps of Heaven
Review: Read this book before you read "Rain of Gold". "Wild Steps of Heaven" is a short read and actually the paternal part of the family story. I wish Villasenor had included the info in Wild Steps of Heaven" in "Rain of Gold". Both books are a wonderful patchwork of history,and genuine family integrity. Excellent summer read!

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Summary: Wild steps of heaven is magic
Review: This is a wonderful book. This book is about a family living during the Mexican Revolution.His writing just takes into this magical world and even though you know that he has made a little piece of history into this great big piece of fiction, he does it so as a matter-of -fact that you just can't believe that it's not true.