Son of Durango
by
Laurance L. Priddy
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Son of Durango by Laurance L. Priddy |
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Driven by poverty and pride, Jesús Camacho leaves his family on their small farm in the Mexican State of Durango and follows his younger brother, Miguel, to work illegally in Texas. Brashly sure of success and encouraged by the Virgin of Guadalupe's appearance to him in a vision, he soon confronts formidable problems. Miguel has disappeared, and Jesús must struggle with the greed and hostility of both Texans and other Mexicans. Driven by a growing love for Maggie Hinojosa, his leadman's daughter, he saves money to marry her instead of sending it home. Constantly threatened with deportation and torn by conflict, will Jesús have the strength and good luck he needs to find Miguel and support his family while making a new life in an alien land?
CRITICAL COMMENT
From Publishers Weekly, April 15, 1996:
A dark and brutal climax mars this otherwise hopeful tale, Priddy's
second novel (after Winning Passion), which tells of a poor Mexican
immigrant who leaves the family farm in Durango, Mexico, to find work
in South Texas. Once across the border, Jesús Camacho lands a job as
a ranch hand, only to lose it by making a pass at the white rancher's
daughter. When the young man discovers that his brother, Miguel,
may be in Fort Worth, he finds work there, at a mobile home company.
Romance blooms with Maggie Hinojosa, over the objections of her father,
a plant foreman, but tragedy strikes when Jesús learns that Miguel is
the victim of an industrial accident that has left him brain-damaged.
To raise funds for his brother and his upcoming marriage, Jesús succumbs
to the lure of quick cash by working as a drug runner. Priddy's writing
is moralistic, but he builds narrative tension adeptly and represents the
lives of hard-luck Mexican immigrants with precision and compassion. The
lack of a proper transition between his protagonist's slow rise and his
subsequent fall into betrayal and murder, however, produces an ending
so jarring that it seems to have wandered in from another novel.
From Review of Texas Books, Fall, 1997:
There are no surprises in Son of Durango. A wetback eludes border
patrols and police. He reaches Fort Worth. He finds employment. He
is exploited and cheated by both Mexicans and Anglos. He likes drinking
beer with his buddies, playing pool, and dancing with pretty women.
The son of Durango, Jesus, is the hackneyed, stereotyped, despised
Mexican. Priddy, however, recreates the stereotype with a difference.
He is no observer. Rather, he moves into the mind and heart of Jesus
and reports what he finds there in a simple, straight-forward
way, without embellishment, except when the Virgin of Guadalupe
appears. Then realism is supplanted by ethereal beauty. It is tempting
to make a Christ figure of Jesus. Religious symbols and parallels
abound. The Virgin is a pervading presence who comes to him in dream-
visions, thrusting him forward to his destiny. In one such visit,
she appears, tearful, and he sees a black void toward which he moves
inexorably. When he is dying, he feels "sad regret for the pain they
(his impoverished family, his paralyzed brother, and his pregnant lover)
still endure, (his regret) tempered by joy in the knowledge of their
ultimate salvation." To look beyond similarities to Christ leads
to an inquiry about Hope-how it deludes and arouses expectations
unrealistic and unrealizable. Is this book a travesty on religion?
Not to be questioned is its cry to all people. Racial lines, brutally
drawn, are reminders of man's inhumanity. Jesus, the victim, is
sacrificed on an altar of avarice and hate. In this respect, the
story of Jesus is a parable. It is suspenseful, tragic, passionate
-and thoughtful...........
Ermestine Sewell Linck
From Books of the Southwest, October, 1996:
Set in the 1980's, this story relates the hardships and opportunities
faced by young Jesus Camacho, illegal Mexican immigrant in Texas.
It's a bittersweet tale. Jesus encounters bouts of homesickness and
discrimination that are balanced by his optimistic outlook and the
friendship of other young men who share his circumstances. Following
the experiences of Jesus, the reader gets a glimpse into the world of
illegal immigration in the borderlands, and a sense of the futility and
human tragedy that surrounds the issue.
Shan C. Sutton
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