Rio Ganges

by David Theis

This remarkable first novel, written in clean, vivid prose by David Theis, leads the reader through an exotic labyrinth as the protagonist, Daniel, attempts to understand the irrational acts that have... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0970152566
• ISBN13: 9780970152565
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Winedale Publishing
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Gringo Gets Baptized in Rio Ganges

With his beautiful and recently unfaithful wife and their children, the protagonist Daniel makes a new start teaching English on a ranch in Mexico. When the industrialist-rancher has him beaten and steals wife and children, I am reminded of McCormack's ALL THE PRETTY HORSES. Both have Texas authors writing about disenchanted Texans going to Mexico, being brutalized, facing loss of a lover and death by the hand of a powerful patron. However, Rio Ganges is a horse of a different and fascinating color -- not a Faulknerian prose poem but a unique, clear, lyrical voice -- not about self-reliant survival, but self-surrendering winning. This helps to provide, unlike PRETTY HORSES, one of Aristotle's ingredients for a good story -- an end, a telos.Daniel's wife leaves him to live with the patron on the ranch. Daniel, devastated, follows a rational course. He catches a bus back north toward the modern side of the Rio. There, I suppose, he would follow up with antidepressants and counseling to learn how his own father's abandonment of him contributes to his marital failure, and individuate with photography, his real calling. After all, the children living in luxury with their mother in Mexico are still young enough to forget. However, Daniel knows the importance of fathers to children.At a stop on the roadside, he buys a hawk with a beak like his father's nose. He switches to a bus headed south to Mexico City and rents a room there on the street Rio Ganges. A submissive homosexual fellow tenant passionately purses him. Daniel becomes intimate with Laura, a spiritually and badly burn-scarred woman. She insists he accompany her to the basilica marking the spot where a canonized Indian saw the Virgin.As a young soldier, Daniel had visited the Seville Cathedral. His conclusion that it was built to allay Conquistador guilt over pillaging the Indians had clinched his religious apostasy since that time. He goes with Laura anyway.Laura decides to walk on her knees up the steps into the shrine like the penitents. Daniel, embarrassed by it all, refuses to follow her. "Then a black-dressed woman stopped beside us as she walked out of the basilica's sanctuary... The nearly toothless woman lay her fingertips against Laura's [scarred] cheek... The woman was muttering something I couldn't make out -- it wasn't Spanish -- and Laura rested her hand on top the woman's. I couldn't tell who was praying for whom."Daniel rides the conveyor belt around and around beneath the image of the Virgin. Until "I passed beneath the angels at Guadalupe's feet I dropped to my knees and threw up my hands... Then I dropped on the rubber belt ... but howl was the best I could do... Gasping I looked up at [Laura] from her torn knee to her face... 'Stay with me,' Laura said..."Daniel does not stay. Despite the patron's private police, who shoot poachers on sight, he takes Laura's pistol and departs to try to retrieve his children.

A stirring, emotional, gripping, highly recommended odyssey

Rio Ganges is an original novel by David Theis about an abandoned son who must endure trial and depredation. He seeks a new life in Mexico, yet when his wife leaves him for a wealthy patron, he must learn to confront and deal with his anger and guilt. His quest to regain his family is a stirring, emotional, gripping, highly recommended odyssey.