Search is for so much more than just a cat

I’ve never read anything quite like Sandra Cisneros’ latest book, “Have You Seen Marie?”

At first blush, it reads like a children’s story about a woman’s search for her missing cat. The woman is Cisneros’ friend.

Cisneros writes about the door-to-door hunt for Marie in a San Antonio, Texas, neighborhood where the author lives.

Along the route, readers meet, among others, the Rev. Chavana, Dave the cowboy, and Craig in his plaid boxer shorts. Even the nearby river is asked if it has seen the missing black-and-white cat.

But the story has equal appeal to adults because it’s about Cisneros’ own search for love and healing after the passing of her mother.

“I felt like crying and taking off, too,” Cisneros writes. “I was 53 years old and I felt like an orphan. I was an orphan. Every day I woke up and felt like a glove left behind at the bus station.”

In an afterword, the award-winning author of “The House on Mango Street” and “Woman Hollering Creek” explores her emotions in the wake of her mother’s death.

She believes the death of a loved one is an opportunity for rebirth. “I wish somebody had told me then that death allows you the chance to experience the world soulfully. … I wish somebody had told me to draw near me objects of pure spirit when living between births. … I wish somebody had told me love does not die, that we can continue to receive and give love after death,” Cisneros writes.

In the story, the women find Marie three days later, hiding under the author’s house. In real life, Marie was missing for more than a week.

But the search also supplied Cisneros with a social and literary boost. It forced her, she writes, to meet neighbors and it gave her the idea for the book.

In the book are Ester Hernández’s endearing drawings.

“I used pastel pencils from France. They have a larger array of colors and saturated pigments,” said Hernández, a resident of San Francisco. “We’re longtime friends. Sandra has collected my artwork. I’ve admired her work.”

David Steinberg is the Journal’s Books editor and an Arts writer.