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In her most completed novel, Barbara Kingsolver needs us by using an epic voyage from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant account of a man drawn between two nations as they invent their modern identities. Born in america, reared in a series of provisional homes in Mexico—from a seaside island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd detects precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he discovers from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he works in the roads, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a enthusiasm for Aztec record and satisfies the amazing, imperious musician Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he would go to work with Lev Trotsky, an exiled politics leader struggling for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with artwork and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a threat of terrible violence. In the mean time, to the north, america will be swept up in the internationalist goodwill of World Battle II. There in the land of his delivery, Shepherd believes he could remake himself in America's hopeful image and lay claim a words of his own. He detects support from an improbable kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Dark brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, politics winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and general population presumption. With deeply persuasive characters, a brilliant sense of place, and a definite understanding of how record and public thoughts and opinions can condition a life, Barbara Kingsolver has generated an unforgettable family portrait of the musician—and of artwork itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of books, establishing its creator among the most provocative and important of her time.
