saint. Although severely tested by the fates that have befallen her daughters, Sofia, who continues to believe in the power of faith and in the principles of social change advocated by her war-hero daughter, decides to run for mayor of Tome. Protected from the world in the cocoon of her mother’srancheria, La Loca continues to pray.

Fe appears close to achieving her quest for the American Dream in her marriage to her cousin Casimiro. The epitome of middle-class consumer utopia—complete with a three-bedroom, two-car-garage tract home and new sedan—deteriorates into a horrid nightmare. In order to afford the amenities of the good life, Fe quits her dead-end job at the bank and takes a job with a mysterious chemical company; the result is her slow, excruciating death from toxic poisoning. While her sisters have been victims of misguided social policies, Caridad becomes the victim of the misguided obsession of one man, Francisco el Penitente. Viewing Caridad as his God-chosen mate, Francisco begins to stalk her. Completely unbalanced after he uncovers Caridad’s friendship with Esmeralda, Francisco abducts and rapes Esmeralda. When he continues to stalk them, the women commit suicide by leaping from a cliff.

The final tragedy which Sofia must face is the death of her youngest daughter, La Loca, from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Facing death as she had lived, with courage and acceptance, La Loca, once again elevated to the status of saint, becomes the patron of her community. Rather than end tragically, the novel returns to the themes of survival, endurance, and heroic triumph in Sofia’s founding of M.O.M.A.S., an eccentric organization for the mothers of martyrs and saints.

So Far from God is a tragicomic exploration of the cultural and temporal collisions in the Chicana world. A third-person narrator tells the story of two decades in the life of the resilient Chicana Sophia and her four ill-fated daughters in a small town in central New Mexico. The novel is a comedic mix of melodrama, visions, recipes, Catholicism, folklore, and miracles. In keeping with the tradition of oral literature, the storyteller sustains an intimate, conversational tone, incorporating Latino slang and regional dialect.

A parody of the Latin American staple, the telenovela, or soap opera, the protagonists are soap opera stereotypes. The visionary and comic plot is filled with ironies, and it contrasts the fantasy of the telenovela genre with the realities of Chicana lives. The novel’s admiration and empathy is for the Chicana—the men in the book are damaged or weak. They exploit or abandon the women or they bleat like sheep. Fe, ambitious, assimilated into the white culture, and perfectly groomed, is ashamed of her family. To reach her dream of middle-class respectability, she works overtime at a factory, where she contracts cancer from a chemical and dies. The beautiful Caridad, sexually promiscuous after her annulled marriage, is attacked and mutilated by several unidentified men. She uses spirituality to reconnect with the mysticism of her heritage, and she becomes a hermit, healer, and channeler. She falls in love with Esmeralda, a lesbian whose Mexican roots mystically connect them. The two die holding hands, leaping from a mesa, called by a Mexican deity. Unlike Fe, who was “plain dead,” they achieve a mythological status, “living forever . . . in the safe, dark earth.” Esperanza, a television journalist and the only college-educated sister, is kidnapped and killed in Saudi Arabia. Emotionally connected to the Native American church, her visionary form converses with Caridad. La Loca, the youngest and most visionary, dies of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) even though she has had no physical contact with people other than her mother and sister since the age of three.

Sofia endures. Abandoned by Don Domingo, her gambling husband who returns twenty years later, she raises her daughters alone. Not deterred by her tragedies, she establishes herself as mayor and organizes cooperatives to improve the economic stability of the impoverished town. The novel ends with her founding of the Society of Mothers of Martyrs and Saints as a tribute to La Loca. This act takes a sardonic twist as the society develops into a touristy purveyor of kitsch. Consistent with the oral tradition, the novel relates cherished Hispanic traditions. As a scathing commentary of the complexities of the Chicana existence, it also portends cultural decline.