‘Secrets’ focuses on crypto-Jews

“Secrets Behind Adobe Walls, A Story of Old Santa Fe” by Sandra Toro; Gaon Books, 178 pp. ($18)

The “secrets” in the title of Sandra Toro’s new book refers to the lead characters of Dr. Benjamin Mendes and his daughter Rachel being crypto-Jews.

“I wanted to make that the primary theme,” said Toro, an Albuquerque resident who will discuss and sign “Secrets Behind Adobe Walls” on Sunday at Bookworks.

Dr. Mendes and his daughter had fled Spain for Portugal, and from Portugal went to Mexico City, and then on to Santa Fe in 1756, which was part of the Territory of New Spain.

“It’s the fear that crypto-Jews had to live with for 300 years. … The Holy Office of the Inquisition opened in Mexico City in 1521 and remained open until 1821,” Toro said.

In Spain, Portugal and in the New World, the Inquisition went after Crypto-Jews — “converso” who had outwardly converted, or converted under threat of death, to Catholicism but secretly maintained their Jewish rituals and traditions. The Inquisition considered them heretics.

Toro’s book is a novel. But as part of her research she read two history books — Stanley Hordes’ “To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico” and Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks’ “The Witches of Abiquiu: The Governor, the Priests, the Genizaro Indians and the Devil.”

The latter book centers on a witchcraft trial that was held between 1756 and 1766.

And the book also discussed a plague in Abiquiu, Toro said, that she wanted to reference in her novel.

After reading the history books, she said she let the ideas in them percolate in her imagination and they helped shape her novel.

“I also decided I wanted to include Dr. Mendes’ medical training at the University of Bologna,” she said.

“He was open-minded enough that he wanted to find out what the curanderas (Native American healers) had been doing for generations. He began to use a lot of their remedies.”

The novel contains the element of a measles epidemic in a small Indian tribe and illustrates what the curanderas did to save lives.

So Toro sees her new book as an adventure story, a medical mystery and also a romance novel.

The love story involves Rachel Mendes and Tony Otero, who is half-Apache and half Spanish Jew.

“He looks Apache but he has bright blue eyes. The minute Rachel lays eyes on him, the sexual chemistry is overwhelming,” Toro said.

“Secrets Behind Adobe Walls” is Toro’s third book. Her previous two were “”By Fire Possessed: Doña Gracia Nasi” and “Princes, Popes and Pirates.” All three were published by Gaon Books of Santa Fe.

If you go

Sandra Toro discusses, signs “Secrets Behind Adobe Walls” at 3 p.m. Sunday at Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande NW, and at 2 p.m. Feb. 23 at Alamosa Books, 8810 Holly NE.