THE WEDGE

The growing interest in Mexico may set the pace for this novel of Mexico in the throes of successive revolutions. The background is the same period as that of Tempest Over Mexico by Rosa King (Little, Brown, July 8th publication -- see last bulletin, page 158). But this is definitely fiction, in the story of a nine year old who tries to prove his manhood by running away from home, and falling into the arms of the rebel army, just as revolution breaks the placid backwater of the long Diaz regime. Success comes and goes, army succeeds army, the sleepy little Mexican villages are plundered by first one group, then another. There is much of humor and some pathos in Desiderlo's escapades. I particularly enjoyed the episode of his securing some household linen for his mother, only to have to suffer mortification of returning it. Throughout the story runs the thread of his growing love for art, inherited from his sculptor father, and this eventually carries him over the border to El Pase, then New Orleans, away from the girl he thought he loved, and who had betrayed him. The story is thinly spun but rather fascinating, in its color and atmosphere and the picture of an unknown and very real Mexico. Romance is secondary to the building of background and the study of the boy and youth. Sell on the Mexican appeal -- and to those who like an unusual type of story.