Kirkus Reviews QR Code
WHERE THE HEART IS by Elizabeth Borton De Trevino

WHERE THE HEART IS

By

Publisher: Doubleday

With the lapse of a decade since publication of an earlier memoir (My Heart Lies South), many things have happened to la Senora Trevino, nee Borton. She was a Californian, a girl reporter, who has never given up her American citizenship and a certain loyalty, but who has cheerfully survived more than 25 years of marriage to a Mexican and nearly complete assimilation into the culture of his family's country. She has raised two sons, ""not compatible, but they were brothers, so they had to get used to it"". She has submitted to the strictures of a society ""devotedly Victorian in its mores"". She has adapted piously to the fact that living in 97% Catholic Mexico is different from being a Catholic in America. She has coped with all the various problems of a large and boisterous menage, a strict and frugal -- though loving -- husband, and a part-time career. Her candid descriptions of the days of her years are just the right prescription for jaded American housewives. She has managed to capture both the universality of family life and the uniqueness of Mexico. Her chronicle is completely devoid of insipidity, and she has cleverly slipped in a few real pieces of information about her adopted country. Her Spanish phrases are usually adequately translated, thus adding to, rather than interrupting, her flow of memories.