Notes by the author
I wrote Continental Nexus over the course of three years from May 1996 to May 1999. In a nutshll it's the story of an extended family of mostly Mexican origins and the migration of a part of that family "al norte", many of the migrants eventually starting a new extended family in Milwaukee. It's also the story of a struggle to make the extended family a viable supportive social unit here in Gringolandia and simultaneously maintain emotional ties to the family in Mexico.
A number of thematic threads run through the novel. The most obvious is the insistent notion that our continent has a north-south orientation. The history of the United States is usually presented as a manifest destiny march from the Atlantic to the Pacific and this produces a misperception of the continent as having an east-west orientation. But for thousands of years, before the arrival of the Europeans the continent had seen north-south migratory patterns and those patterns continue today.
Another theme of Continental Nexus is the primacy of the cultural over the historical. People are more important than grand, national purposes. The family is more important that the nation. Food and drink and story-telling and song and dance to celebrate births and pair-bondings and to honor the dead: these are the stuff of life. National purposes are unwelcome disruptions of all that is ordinary and cherished.
I experienced an intense but quiet joy in writing the book and I am pleased with the result. So, on my own terms at least, the novel is a success, even though the little old wizened man who resides in my brain waiting for me to blunder so that he can again cackle, "I told you so", will have the final say.
$18.95
