Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

The Lacuna

Barbara Kingsolver

Harper, Jul 20 2010, $16.99

ISBN: 9780060852580

His father is an American who has nothing to do with him; his mother is a Mexican who sort of raised him, but parenting was not her gig. Thus early on, Harrison William Shepherd learned to take care of himself as he grew up in Mexico without the benefit of schooling. He found books and loved reading; self taught of course. He begins writing as an adolescent; claiming his work is that of Mexican notorieties like artists Rivera and Kahlo, and Russian Bolshevik exile Trotsky; eventually he meets some of his heroes.

When his hero Trotsky is assassinated allegedly by another Bolshevik, Harrison heeds the advice of Kahlo to flee for America to become a full time writer. He authors historical fiction while supporting the Communist Worker's Movement in North America until 1951when the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities orders him to testify.

The Lacuna is a an intriguing historical epic that uses diaries and memoirs to tell the tale of the Communist movement in Mexico and the United States starting from the Great Depression until the McCarthy hearings. The story line is very deep as the audience sees into the souls of the two artists (and their works) as well as to a lesser degree Trotsky amongst other leading lights in the North American "heyday" of Communism. Although the pace is slow and never accelerates, the story line is insightful and in many ways cautionary as Barbara Kingsolver provides a powerful look at two decades in American and Mexican history that has reverberations with today's recession.

Harriet Klausner