The mainstream American novel has consistently revealed at least one common truth about life in this country: it is filled with contradictions and extreme ranges of experience which cannot be reconciled. (p. 72)

Bless Me, Ultima is a unique American novel. Living apart from the mainstream, a young New Mexican Chicano has offered in this, his first novel, a rich and powerful synthesis for some of life's sharpest oppositions. Perhaps Rudolfo Anaya would object to my calling his novel "American," even though it is the story of a young boy growing up in New Mexico during and immediately after World War II, a war in which his three older brothers fight. Despite Anaya's reflections on the effect of the war on American communities, the alienation of sons and their flight to the city, deeper themes are at the book's heart. (pp. 72-3)

In the course of the novel, throughout...