AIR AND FIRE

Fantasy and reality coalesce in a cauldron of passion and pathos, fired by the heat of a searing summer in coastal Mexico: a formidable fin de siäcle tale from the wide-ranging author of The Five Gates of Hell (1991) and Dreams of Leaving (1988). To a remote French mining community in Baja California are sent the numbered cast-iron pieces of a new church, designed by the creator of the Eiffel Tower and entrusted to the care of Theo Valence, one of Eiffel's engineers. Theo's mind and heart are devoted to the church's construction, leaving his young wife Suzanne to feel restless and unfulfilled. She befriends Wilson, a piano-playing American prospector pursuing his father's failed dream of gold; her charms dazzle both him and the hotblooded Montoya, the Mexican militia captain charged with keeping the peace in town. While Wilson wistfully accepts Suzanne's friendship, Montoya declares his love, mistaking her kindness toward him as a license to woo her. She alienates her American friend by showing him Montoya's love letter, then, as Indian miners angered by a deadly mine accident revolt, spurns her would-be suitor, enraging him to the point of shooting his own horse and threatening the natives. Suzanne rides off into the desert alone, seeking solace, with Wilson dispatched to find her before she dies of thirst. The two return to find the church destroyed, Montoya butchered, and the revolt savagely crushed; but before they can recover from their ordeal, Suzanne is on her way back to Paris with Theo, who has rediscovered his love for her. Thomson's surreal sensibilities, challenged by the cross- fertilization of cultures and desire, elevate standard melodramatic fare into a saga richly atmospheric and satisfying.