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It is a morning in April 1897. Spring has not yet come to the isolated mountain village of Camposanto, in the New Mexico Territory. Crusted snow still clings to the rocky hillsides, while a cold wind sighs from the looming, shrouded peaks.
In Camposanto’s plaza, a crucifixion is taking place. Lashed to his cross, a dying priest, Father Lorenzo Soledad, gazes down to the ragged knot of villagers huddled to pay their odd tributes.
Who is this anguished Soledad, and what has brought him to this ignominious fate? Is he a martyr, criminal or saint? Who are these strange executioners of Camposanto? Why such a terrible punishment on someone who has labored among them for so long?
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“The Soledad Crucifixion” by Nancy Wood UNM Press, $21.95, 336 pp. |
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The answers are woven into Nancy Wood’s epic new novel, “The Soledad Crucifixion,” a singular and incisive work displaying the mature power of a writer steeped in New Mexico’s unique history and traditions.
Through deft flashbacks and flashforwards, Wood recounts Soledad’s fatherless childhood in the bordello where his mother worked. After he accidentally shoots and kills her instead of the abusive customer he was aiming for, the Law gives Soledad a choice: prison or the seminary.
He chooses the latter, but the loose morality of his formative years and increasing doubts about his faith, his vows (particularly celibacy) and the church’s dogma ensure the persistence of his sinful ways and conflict with his superiors.
They give him a last chance with an assignment to Camposanto (Spanish for “graveyard”). After years of often-crushing Catholic domination, the village’s Calabaza Indians are primed for a love/hate relationship with the priest.
Soledad, though repulsed by some of their bizarre customs, is drawn to their nature-based spirituality – and to La Luz, the temptress who will bear his child. Soledad has friends as well as enemies in Camposanto, and they all have a hand in his destiny.
The author has for many years chronicled the lives of the Pueblo people through writing and photography. “The Soledad Crucifixion” is an admirable addition to Wood’s extensive and multifaceted body of work.
Robert Woltman is an Albuquerque poet and writer.
Nancy Wood reads from, signs “The Soledad Crucifixion” from 5-7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 1, at Gerald Peters Gallery, 1011 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe; at 3 p.m. Sept. 8 at Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande NW; and at 2 p.m. Sept. 9 at Tome on the Range, 158 Bridge St., Las Vegas, N.M.
