I felt invisible in my early life for many reasons including being brown and adopted. As an adoptee, I saw myself only in mirrors and photos. But being Chicana – born in the United States of Mexican Indigenous descent and with a life dedicated to social justice – I also didn’t see the people I knew, my friends and family members. We were all missing from books, movies and television shows. Our stories weren’t taught in classrooms and only rarely appeared in newspapers and then too often with a negative or stereotypical connotation. Even advertisements left us out. That absence inspired a desire in me to be present, to see not only the people I love honored and represented but all those peoples who have been marginalized and left out finally acknowledged with respect. That desire has become my passion.
We all know the Toni Morrison quote: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
“500 Springs,” my novel in progress, is one of those books for me.
A Summary of ‘500 Springs’
Like many couples consumed by the sexy heat of a new relationship, Yalli and Tacho believe they have loved in another lifetime. They don’t know the half of it. For some 500 springs, the two of them have been trying to fulfill a sacred promise made about the time the Spanish arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. As a novitiate in a convent in New Spain, with a brilliant if trouble-making poet, or a boy stolen away to mine silver, as orphans meant to help populate California or young parents caught in the cross-fire of independence, they keep getting ambushed by the sagas of history.
This time, despite the aftermath of 9/11, they have every reason to believe in a happy ending. Da Boyz, one of them at least, have embraced their new dad. And there’s a new baby on the way, surely the daughter Yalli has always wanted. A move out of Denver means her giving up her career and the Yalli Dreamhouse with the walkout basement and wraparound deck for a century-old farmhouse in the middle of the neighbor’s alfalfa fields, but they can afford to live on his social worker’s salary out there. Maybe she’ll even trace her bio mom’s family history in her spare time.
Minutes from the Sand Creek Massacre site and a former “camp” where the U.S. held Japanese Americans during World War II, the wind blows another direction. Living in a little house on the Great Plains, along the old Santa Fe Trail, proves dry and swarming with critters – and a past – that bite. Tacho’s boss finds himself a distraction that puts Tacho in the hot seat, for half the pay. A lonely Yalli finds vodka bottles in his toolbox. When he vanishes one blustery afternoon, he winds up offering an out that lands them on the West Coast – with another baby, a new business and a sobering scare on the beach.
Back home, Denver embraces Yalli, who is grateful to be back to work, but Tacho struggles. The past he remembers emerges in increasingly nasty jolts, no matter what treatment they try, until one terrifying night forces Yalli to see they are dealing with something bigger and darker and deeper than this life can explain.
But how is that even conceivable?
And if it is, how can one possibly heal from a trauma they cannot recall? Especially if life proves relentless and every clue leads you no closer to understanding. Can love, even the eternal kind, prevail?
In 500 Springs, Yalli and Tacho’s contemporary struggle carries them backwards along the Camino Real to the site where they maybe chose the wrong side of empire. Through them, the novel explores a too often forgotten past: the legacy of a people descended from colonized and colonizer that gets compounded by today’s challenges, including homelessness, addiction, and access to healthcare and opportunity.
And yet, that age-old strife has shaped a people who don’t give up on love – or promises – without a fight.
500 Springs; A Novel. A history of the peoples of the Southwest told through a 500-year-old love story. Genre: Literary Fiction.