Customer Reviews

Left Alive

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Upon turning the last page of this book, feeling "cheated" by the tease of so many loose ends (did she do it? what about the sweater? why WAS Rafael "left alive?!"), I was poised to pick up my "cyber pen" and allow my frustrations to freely associate and flow! ... then ... I relaxed ... into the awareness that - it was not Graciela Limon's literary intention to solve a murder "mystery" (and merely answer a "whodunnit?!") - but, to serve up to her readers a look at, and into, the complex and tormented psyche of a "survivor."

At this, Limon succeeds - quite cleverly - as she arouses in her readers the same level and intensity of emotions that plague her protagonist's heart, soul, and mind. Thus, along with Rafael, we suffer his re-lived fears (especially of abandonment) and feel the sadness that wells up, and from, the wounded child who still cries deep inside.

And, when the image that young Rafael has spent a life-time mentally creating, of his absent mother as innocent protectress and would-be savior, (his security blanket) begins to be pulled away by the possibility of another, very different reality, the "lone coyote" is left uncovered, unprotected, cold, and on his own - to howl in the darkness, at the fading of his life's only hope/light.

As Sister Gladys wisely remins us, "there are many truths and many roads leading to those different truths ... it's easy to get lost and come across a truth we least want to discover." For Rafael, it is the discovery of one of these truths that leads him to the "end of his road" -- a dead end that appears unexpectedly and abruptly as the only way off of the dangerous path that has beckoned to him for the 24 years of his anguished life.

To repeat Limon's words of wonderment, "how many suffer so much loss?" - and - "is the injury done to the spirit irreparable?"

Sadly, in short .... too many, .... and .... too often.