Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility

Patricia Santana has struck a chord on so many levels. She went back into the 1960's where even as children we knew they were turbulent, yet exhilarating times. Her expression of adolescent curiosities, love and confusion are as prevalent today as they were during that time, making this a novel that most people will have a self-to-text connection with. Being the child of immigrants I easily related to the home she grew up in and the traditions of the world during that time. The novel is a well crafted. It makes us look at the world through the eyes of truly plausible, interesting characters and gives us some insights of the devastating aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Unfortunately, I am not the Francisco that Yoli, the young heroine in Patricia Santana's beautiful first novel, falls in love with. But I wish I was. For long after having read this novel, I still find myself thinking of Yoli and imagining her giving me "the look". Isn't that the highest and most worthwhile achievement of a novel? That a Yoli or a Don Quixote become as real as hope, and in our moments of reflection, their words and actions echo our own internal beauty? Patricia, may you give us many more Yoli's and may your clear and strong writing, like a rippling, cool, mountain brook, continue to remind us of our source.

I'm a great fan of the "coming of age" story and of the first novel. "The Cider House Rules" by John Irving, being one of my favorite coming of age stories. In Patracia Santana's "Motorcyle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility" we view the world from the eyes of a teenage Mexican American girl/woman whose brothers' recent return from Vietnam has turned her world upside down. Her brother, like so many Vietnam vets., has returned home possessed by demons.While her brother struggles to right himself fourteen-year-old Yolanda "Yoli" Sahagun must not only learn to deal with her beloved brothers' gloom and doom mood but learn to deal with her own daunting and confusing experience. That of becoming a woman. I hope the rest of America soon discovers, as I did, this rich, humorous, sad, and wonderful story. Author Santana obviously has her finger, and her heart, on the pulse of the Latino community. The dialoge is strong and Latino in this well written and well told story. For a glimps inside the life of a real Mexican Ameican family, read "Motorcyle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility." Cammy Diaz A @ L