Midnight Cactus

Protagonist Alice Coleman's bravery and adventurous spirit in moving from bustling London to the wild southern Arizona border town of Temorosa kept me fascinated throughout this entire book. Bella Pollen explores a plethora of relationships to which all readers can relate: a deteriorating marriage, precocious and sometimes challenging children, a passionate love affair, overbearing and meddling neighbors, and the frightening unknown -- all set in a backdrop which explores the highly volatile subject of illegal immigration from all sides. It is a personal look into a world to which many of us have never been exposed except from newspaper headlines. Midnight Cactus touched all of my sensibilities; in fact, I deliberately slowed down my reading pace toward the end as I did not want it to end. Can't wait for the movie!

Migration, freedom, escape, fulfillment are just some of the themes running through this book. Set on the United States /Mexican Border where thousands of Mexicans, desperate for work are caught in a daily battle between their need to feed their families and their efforts to avoid the U.S border patrol, this story touched me on so many levels. I am a second generation immigrant. My mother has worked all her life to give my brothers and I an education way beyond anything she herself received. To do this, she too, was forced to leave a culture and a country she loved. Now she spends most of her time looking after my grandmother who is sick and cannot be left alone. My mother has subjugated many of her own hopes and dreams for her family and there is nothing you can tell her about the desire to escape versus the pull of duty. Midnight Cactus juxtaposes an English mother with two small children escaping from a husband she doesn't love with a remote area of Arizona close to the border. Alice Coleman inadvertantly hires a gang of Mexican workers to renovate a small town she has inherited in a business deal. When she discovers her workers are illegals, she is forced to confront the immmigration issue and make some hard ethical choices. How many people both in this country and in the wealthier parts of Mexico close their ears and eyes to the real situation on the border? This page turning book makes the immigration struggle personal and not just a political debate on the television or in the papers. Illegal immigration is an ugly topic and I felt the author recognized this and faced it head on while also writing a touching story about a woman looking for love and fulfillment. I loved the relationship between her and her children which rang so true for me having to look after my small nieces and nephews. I understand the irritation of other reviewers about badly edited Spanish, but this book gave me so much more than that . I think this is a story about choices we are all faced with and lines we all might have to cross at some point in our lives - whether emotional, ethical, or geographical. This book and its stunning resolution stayed with me long after I had finished reading it. Highly recommended.

This book just gets better and better as the story progresses. The characters are so well drawn, especially the gorgeous Duval, Alice herself who narrates the story and her two eccentric children, Jack and Emily. Set on the Mexican border where Alice takes her children in order to escape an unhappy marriage and have some time away from her hectic London life, trouble brews when Alice unwittingly gets involved in helping Mexicans cross the desert into America. The plot heats up and thickens, twists and turns right up until the final, fascinating revelation. Pollen is a beautiful, witty, percepetive writer. She has an effortless style and the characters really live. A MUST read!

I never wanted to turn the last pages, of this book. The more exciting the climax became the more I dreaded coming to the end. A book that takes you and holds you because you want to go on living with the characters, caring about what happens to them, is rare and wonderful. Midnight Cactus is romantic,exciting, scary,tender, and above all passionate. I loved this book.

I loved this book because not only is it a wildly romantic adventure story, it has at it's core the heartbreaking truth that no matter how fulfilling it is to be a wife and mother, there is always that hunger for something more. As I followed her journey I found in Alice the guilt, hope, excitement, courage, and despair that makes her one of the most endearing heroines I've come across in a long time. And the heart stopping climax had me holding my breath, totally caught up in which path she would choose.