From Everlasting to Everlasting by Sophie Freeman

Abstract

186 Western American Literature cara. Each character is awarded a chapter to tell his or her story in the first person voice. Unfortunately, the characters’voices are difficult to differentiate one from another, and since each character falls into a camp for or against Becky and her escapades, there is very little difference between what we hear from Lionel Villa and Viola Barragan in one camp or Elvira Navarrete and Ira Escobar in the other. The characters’ gossip session is consistently and annoyingly interrupted by the narrator at the beginning and the end of the chapters. After Reina Gampoy praises Becky’s ability “to leave a man, to abandon and desert him, and then to tell him to-get-the-hell-out” as “something special, very special,” Hinojosa writes: “The listener, a smoker, enjoyed lighting another unfiltered Pall Mall for Maria de los Reyes Gampoy. The listener also drank two thimblefulls of San Carlos mezcal, ‘The Best There Is.’ The listener, from experience, remembers what Un Tal Lucas once said, ‘There ain’t such a thing as good mezcal.’” The discourse ofBeckyAnd Her Friends ispeppered with Spanish phrases, una mujer neuva, Gente descontenta. And the characters speak from a dis­ tinctly Hispanic viewpoint, Catholic, superstitious, traditional. These elements are attractive and, perhaps, are the most redeeming qualities of the work, for while the structure of the novel is unique, it fails in its attempt to corral a variety of characters and establish a lively vocal forum. Instead, the novel is tedious and requires readers to wade through extensive and unnecessary redundancies. R. L. STRENG Texas Christian University From Everlasting to Everlasting. By Sophie Freeman. (Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Ashley Books, Inc., 1989. 220 pages, $19.95.) The publisher of this novel suggests that it be used in high school English and Social Studies classes. But while junior high students may find exciting some of the experiences of 15-year-old Ellen, who is part of a Mormon wagon train on its way to Utah in the late 1800s and in whose voice the story is told, even young readers will notice major flaws in the text. For example, when Ellen’s wagon train enters one town, she is grateful for rest “after weeks of traveling” and the adults stock up on supplies, “which were running so very low.” However, according to the novel’s time line, Ellen’s group has been traveling west at this point for only three or four days. And when we find that these pioneers cross the plains and reach the Rockies in a little more than one week, the novel loses credibility. Several flaws of this type, along with poor editing on the mechanical level, make the novel seem inappropriate for use in public schools. However, the book may be a fine teaching aid in Mormon parochial classes, for there are few historical novels for adolescents that present Mormon experiences sopositively. KATE BOYES Utah State University ...