Some stories need to be told, even if they’re just a fiction take on the original tale, the one that was also fabricated by the usual suspects, you know, by the historians in charge of supposedly telling it like it is. Reyna Grande’s A Ballad of Love and Glory is one of those fictional takes on a historical time in our past that will help correct a faulted script and bring some light into the minds on both sides of the tale. It’s a book scheduled to be published next year, on March 15, 2022, to be more exact.
Having had the chance to read an advanced e-copy of the novel, my humble, though somewhat biased opinion, of a mexicano who grew up in Mexico and often abhorred the land-grabbing acts of the manifest destiny driven country to the north, I will tell you that the author, Reyna Grande, is about to open a proverbial can of worms. Which is good, according to me. She’s just gotta be ready for it.
Bring it on, Ms. Grande. Not that I’m taunting you; I’m just glad that an American author is willing to truly tell it like it was, even if it is just in fictional art. Thanks.
The novel delves in a narrative that illustrates the pains of war through the eyes of Ximena, a tejana, and John Riley, a San Patricio, an Irish immigrant and a U.S. Army soldier who decides to fight on the side of the Mexicans. Riley’s story and that of other St. Patrick’s Battalion’s volunteers have been told before. Their doings and their sufferings are already part of myths and lore in the country to the south. The author, however, weaves her words into a love story that is not only believable but also heart wrenching.
A Ballad of Love and Glory also reminds us of an asqueroso, the creepy eleven-times Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna, a double-crossing traitor who gave away parts of Mexico to the U.S. and whose acts will forever remind us of an insane time in the history and the annals of the country to the south. For folks like me, though, for someone who grew up in Mexico and knew long ago about of the pendejadas, the idiocies committed by Santa Anna, reading about them turns the telling into a painful process. But, even if it hurts, we need to be reminded of it again, to attempt to stop history from repeating itself.
There are many historic names included in the plot, like Canales, Falcón, and a couple of Chenos, whose real acts were never really etched in stone or in the scrolls of history, but which Ms. Grande tends to mix into the narrative. Like most creative minds that write about that kind of fiction, she takes plenty poetic license and includes those tejanos in the plot. I’m okay with it, especially since it’s coming from a writer that’s messing with Texas in a way that goes beyond the message in the original slogan, the “Don’t mess with Texas” phrase, which was created as a warning to folks that littered the roads.
My take? Buy the book once it’s out next year. Or before. Read it, think about the subject matter, the uncalled-for land grab executed by a country gone wrong and besieged by a convenient fad called manifest destiny. Ponder over the actions of the St. Patricks and about their decisions to go fight on the Mexican side. Think about Ximena and John Riley and about their dubious battle. But also about their love story.
But most of all, think about all the tejanos that lost their land, their homes, after the greedy, slave holding Texians took over a chunk of Mexican soil, the now called Lone Star state.
Again, buy the book. And read it. Thoroughly.
AUTHOR: Pedro Chávez