El Milagro and Other Stories

the long version

Ticking clocks and tolling bells, scents of roses and warm tortillas: this is the barrio of years past as captured in the words of Patricia Preciado Martin. Cuentos, recuerdos, stories, memories - all are stirred into a simmering caldo by a writer whose love for her heritage shines through every page. Reminiscent of Like Water for Chocolate, the book is a rich mix of the simplest ingredients - food, family, tradition. We see Silviana striding to her chicken coop, triggering the "feathered pandemonium" of chickens who smell death in the air. We meet Elena, standing before the mirror in her wedding dress, and Teodoro Sanchez, who sleeps under the sky and smells of "chaparral and mesquite pollen and the stream bottom and the bone dust of generations."