LET THEIR SPIRITS DANCE

First-novelist Duarte (stories: Fragile Night, not reviewed) skillfully treats the wounds inflicted on a Chicano family by the war in Vietnam.

The death in battle of young Sgt. Jesse Ramirez during the Tet offensive of 1968 broke the spirit of his Arizona family. The eldest of four children and the favorite of his sister Teresa, narrator of this unpretentious and moving story, Jesse was adored by three generations, none of whom completely recovered from his loss. Three decades later, Teresa is a grandmother and elementary schoolteacher on the brink of losing her career after a catfight with her estranged husband’s girlfriend. Her siblings’ lives are as messy if not messier. Baby brother Paul, who’s been in and out of jail, has lost custody of his brilliant son Michael. Younger sister Priscilla can’t get over the loss of a child. And now Teresa’s mother, in poor health and widowed after years with an openly unfaithful husband, tells her daughter that she’s heard Jesse’s voice in the night. She informs Teresa that Jesse wants her to go to Washington to touch his name on the Vietnam Memorial, that she has promised to do so, and that it is more or less up to Teresa to make it happen. Quickly. There’s no doubt that the trip will occur or that the ending will be emotional. What keeps Duarte’s story from tipping into the dangerous swamps of ethnic sanctity, magically realistic plot rescues, or made-for-TV simplicity (and the wheels get frighteningly close to the berm from time to time) is the author’s formidable skill in rendering a large family whose Mexican Indian past has shaped, toughened, and, occasionally, handicapped them. No one’s a saint here, not even the grandmothers who set up altars every night to the Virgin of Guadalupe. These old ladies are as tough and as dominant as their Calabrian or Bengali counterparts, and their children nurse youthful slights long into adulthood. Still, an enviable core of good humor and loyalty prevails.

Intelligent, unpretentious, and appealing.