". . . portrays a quest for knowledge. . . . [It] is a novel about many cultures intersecting at an urban, power-, and politics-filled crossroads, represented by a powerful white businessman, whose mother just happens to be a Jew who has hidden her Jewishness, . . . and a boy from the barrio who fathers a child raised in the barrio but who eventually goes on to a triumphant assertion of his cross-cultural self."—World Literature Today " fulfills two important functions: it restores the missing R to the name of the city, and it shows off Anaya's powers as a novelist."—Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio