[Land is the unifying image in Heart of Aztlan], as it was in [Anaya's] first novel, Bless Me, Ultima (1972)…. One of the strengths of Bless Me, Ultima was its mythological layerings paralleling the story's surface narrative, an aspect also true of Heart of Aztlan, though not as successfully employed here. Still there is much to admire in Anaya's recent work.

The story begins with the sale of Clemente Chavez's three-acre farm in the small agrarian community of Guadalupe, New Mexico. The land is depleted—no longer capable of sustaining the lives of the people who have worked it for generations…. [Urban] life in Albuquerque (after the Korean war) offers few compensations for Chavez, his wife and their four teen-age children…. [Anaya's] novel depicts the systematic destruction of the family unit once the rootedness to the land has been severed….

As in his earlier novel, Anaya draws upon the...