Review: A Ballad of Love and Glory

 Michael Sedano

Author Reyna Grande must have watched news reports of the American president with an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu as Grande composed her historical novel, A Ballad of Love and Glory. The novel, released March 15, throws a man and woman into the losing side of a bloody war, he a soldier on the front lines, she a nurse and healer. The couple, and their country, face chaos from disastrous leadership.

 

An American president governs under a secret agreement with an enemy country. The president, a vain, rich man, surrounds himself with sycophants and indulgent women. When he’s alone with a woman, the president targets her for sex. The president is a hateful piece of flesh who blames others in the face of his own failure.

That’s Santa Anna, president of Mexico whose failures allowed an invading United States to keep the northern half Mexico’s land in 1848. The man is John Riley, leader of the San Patricio Battalion of the Mexican Army fighting invading US troops. Riley's a deserter from the US Army.  The woman is Ximena, a Tejana widow named from a poem by Whittier, and the most indomitable woman in literature today.

 

Grande’s written a beautiful love story that doesn’t get cluttered with sly allusions to current events, even though Grande draws an exceptionally despicable person in her portrayal of Santa Anna. The vain Mexican president sits back to let US soldiers slaughter a company of Mexican soldiers due to their Mexican commander needing to learn a lesson.

 

Animal lovers will emerge from the cock-fighting scene disgusted at the president’s affectionate cuddling with his favorite cock. Grande gets good mileage from it, though, when Santa Anna thinks he’s being tender, Grande points out the president strokes Ximena as if she were his favorite rooster. About the only way Grande could have indicted Santa Anna more is having him rape Ximena.

 

A Ballad of Love and Glory is a war novel about Mexicans getting their asses kicked.  But we know this going in. It’s in the telling, and this novel’s rich with telling. For instance, the author’s research informs such details as fort construction, the effects on limbs of cannon shot, herbal poultices and preparation. Rather than concentrate on battle fields, the most effective war scenes are those of the army in flight.

 

Grande’s military focus is the strategic failure of boastful Mexican generals. We see through Riley’s eyes winning tactics that are opposite of their orders. Mexican generals aren’t military but connected rich guys who love fancy uniforms. US officers are total jerks, but they’re West Pointers with superb military skills. One of the biggest jerk officers survives an inept attempt to frag his tent. The author lets that sit there and it doesn’t taste good, that that jerk of a U.S. soldier survived. Whose side are you on?

 

When the routed Mexican army flees on foot, they have to walk hundreds of miles to the next big city. Hundreds die along the way from wounds, hunger, suicide, weather. Thousands of nameless peons and soldiers die in the novel. This isn’t about them. But count them, 400 die overnight, hunkered down under their ponchos unable to weather a storm. After battles, thousands of limbs litter a battlefield pooled with blood. Why does blood always have "a metallic smell"?

 

Love happens. Riley’s guilt at leaving Ireland tortures him. He absorbs all manner of privation in a Catholic way, practicing denial and guilt. Ximena understands Riley’s religious bent. She tells him, after they’ve had sex, if he thinks he needs to do penance for loving her, “do not love me”.  The author sympathizes with the character’s dilemma and gives Riley a technicality. John’s wife is already dead when Riley finally gives in to lust. He doesn’t commit a Sin although he doesn’t know this. 

 

Readers will enjoy Reyna Grande’s smoothly flowing language and don’t need to interrupt the italicized gaelic ejaculations with English. Here and there, the author slips in some dialect spelling and syntax (“Jimmy, is that ye, boy?” / “Whist.  Don’t exert yourself Charlie, be easy. We shall do aught we can to save ya,” Riley said.”). Thankfully Grande doesn't attempt a novel full of dialect. 

It’s clear Grande’s research helped the author pick up colorful expressions lending authenticity to conversations, as when a comrade consoles the love-torn hero, “The sight of her fills one with the same delight as the first shovel of upturned earth after a hard winter.” That's not how city people talk nor see the world.

 

Reyna Grande has loaded A Ballad of Love and Glory with high-charged energy, excitement, adventure, frustration, anger, even a modicum of laughter. Grande has readers pulling for the Mexican side against “our” G.I.s. You won’t love the U.S. less because you enjoy the novel, and maybe see parallels in characters, or the setting of a powerful nation invading a neighbor without provocation. Current events don’t get in the way of a good story.