The Ghost of Milagro Creek

by Melanie Sumner

"Devastating . . . Ghost of Milagro Creek] simmers with metaphysical tension."--Time Out Chicago

The story of Ignacia Vigil Romero, a full Jacarilla Apache, and the two boys, Mister and Tom s, she raised to adulthood unfolds in a barrio of Taos, New Mexico--a mixed community of Native Americans, Hispanics, and whites. Now deceased, Ignacia, a curandera--a medicine woman, though some say a witch--begins this tale...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565129172
• ISBN13: 9781565129177
• Release Date: July 2010
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 267 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Like a Beautiful River

Melanie Sumner's second novel is like a beautiful river on a summer day: it shines, gathers the light of the sun, reflects the sky and the trees arching over, but the heart of the thing--what soothes and moves, what takes hold and releases--lies deep below the surface. Swimming through its pages, which contain passages of great lyric beauty--whole paragraphs read like poems--brings an immediate pleasure, but it's not until one emerges that he knows he has been changed by his being immersed--changed and, in a significant way, healed. The book's power to effect such a healing springs from its lovable main character, Ignacia Romero, a curandera, or medicine woman, who desires to heal not only those she loves and cares for--her grandson, Mister, for instance, whose parents have abandoned him--but also those she must tolerate. Her compassion extends even to Ramona Mondragon, the hapless and sometimes abusive mother of Yolanda and Tomas, Mister's best friend and blood brother; although continually disappointed by Ramona's inability to love herself and her children, Ignacia mixes up a paste that gets rid of the corns on Ramona's feet. When a stray dog of a man named Layton Scoggins, who goes by the name Chief because, as he says, "that's what God calls me," shows up on her doorstep, Ignacia doesn't shoo him away but allows him to become useful again (he fixes her front door and installs an irrigation system in her garden). Eventually, Ignacia takes Chief as her man. Having been restored, albeit temporarily, to wholeness, Chief himself acts as an agent of healing; he builds a sweat lodge and, in one of the book's funniest and most powerful scenes, teaches everyone how to pray, saying, "Don't pray for yourself; it don't work." While she lives, Ignacia is the strand that holds together the tattered blanket that is the barrio of Taos, New Mexico, where the majority of the novel unfolds. She is Abeula, grandmother, to the entire community. Upon her death, life gets messier, murkier, very quickly. Mister commits a crime that will alter him forever; he flees the barrio, and it's all he can do to maintain a loose grip on reality. Spiraling in the hole created by Abuela's death, missing her love, he seeks the love of Rocky, the gorgeous gringa he has wanted, ached for, imagined himself with since the tenth grade. Whether he survives depends almost entirely on whether Rocky forgives and accepts him despite his unthinkable crime, which affects her as markedly as it does him. One of the strengths of The Ghost of Milagro Creek--and there are many--is that it acknowledges the brokenness of the world and the need we have, all of us, for healing. Sumner offers some ideas as to how we might proceed--she suggests we must come close to the earth, or closer at least, and closer to each other--but, in the end, she leaves the blanks unfilled. She knows there are no easy answers. Her characters are as fractured as they were at the start, which is to say, they

A Haunting And Mystical Novel

Every now and then, a "stealth book" comes along - one that surprises you, captures you in its grip, and doesn't let go until you turn the last page. The Ghost of Milagro Creek is such a book. I expected this book to be something else entirely - a light mystery about two blood brothers who vied for the same gringo girl in the Cain-and-Abel tradition. In reality, the book is lyrical, poignant, and from time to time, electrifying. It depicts the life of the Taos barrio colorfully and - in my mind - authentically. Milagro Creek is the story of Ignancia Vigil Romero, a Jicarilla (basket weaver) Apache and a curandera (medicine woman, or some might say, witch) and the two sons she raises to adulthood: Mister and Tomas. It is filled with secondary characters who jump off the pages - Raquel O'Brien, the gringo short-story writer, Chief, a bipolar man who establishes a local sweat house, the very fallible priest Manny Petit and a host of others. The immersion into Taos life is described at one point by Petit's Right Reverend: "At first, it will jump right out at you - sun gods, saints dressed up like dolls, peyote buttons, nudity. Then you get used to it. You want to be politically correct and all that. Okay, then. After a while, you start to see it how they see it. When that happens, it's time to leave." As readers, we enter this mystical world. We are present for susto--the live burial of the child Mister until "the bud of (his) soul began to swell...pushing outward with mysterious force." We hear the tales that are the framework for the Jicarilla Apache life. We see the rivalry of the blood brothers becoming more and more potent. And we get into the rhythm of the natural world and all its mysteries and glories. The denouement is played out in all sorts of ways - through police reports, witness statements, case worker interviews, short-story snippets written by Raquel (Rocky), and a pilgrimage to Chimayo - an actual event that takes place in New Mexico. This is not a linear book; it bounces back and forth in time, switches narrators (a big part is narrated by Ignacia, who is already dead of ALS at the books onset), and saunters back to ancient tales as it bobs and weaves it way to the conclusion. The mystical Taos landscape is every bit as much of a "character" as the humans; as Ignacia says to Mister, "Rock, sky woman...this is your mother." Melanie Sumner has created an authentic and heartbreaking book that will stay with me. I urge you to discover it for yourself.