Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir by Jean Guerrero #crux #jeanguerro #randomhousepublishing #memoir #netgalley @absltmom

Crux is a constellation located in the southern sky in a bright portion of the Milky Way. . Its name is Latin for cross, and it is dominated by a cross-shaped or kite-like asterism that is commonly known as the Southern Cross.

Jean Guerro has always wanted her father’s love, his praise, his admiration of her. She searches for a way, any way to make him connect with her but her father, Papi is a troubled man. He is a diagnosed schizophrenic, although Jean and Papi and some family doubt that diagnosis. They see Papi as being gifted, a man who communes with nature, a seer, a reader of destiny, a clairvoyant for sure the voices he hear and the things he does make him so. Marco Antonio is an enigma, a man Jean strives in this memoir to know, to explain, to march in sync with and yet Marco is a totally disconnected man. He goes through bouts of being addicted to alcohol to drugs of many kinds and casting himself adrift in a world that only he seems to understand fully. He is man haunted by intellect, by reality, by being different, distant and divergent from the norm.

In many ways Jean, who becomes an investigative reporter, tries to be like Marco, for in being like him she might come to a better understanding, a better communion with her father, a way in which to be a daughter to a man who is always unsettled and dislocated. She travels in Mexico linking up with family people who know her father, if that is at all possible to know a man such as Marco. Can she, in finding a reason for her father’s behavior, therefore find a reason for hers?

This was a complex story as Ms Guerro tries to see her father from all aspects. Is he really the schizophrenic that some think him to be or is he a mystical creature, one who reads signs, a shaman, a healer, a sorcerer? It is a painful journey that the author takes and many times it was a difficult story to both read and tell. For Jean, her father is her constellation, he is the bright portion of her life.

Thank you to Jean Guerro, Random House Publishing, and NetGalley for a copy of this tangled tale.

I did find this self same idea in Marco as well.

 

Jean Guerrero, winner of the PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers Prize, is the Fronteras reporter for KPBS, the NPR and PBS affiliate in San Diego, reporting on cross-border issues for radio and TV. She has also worked for The Wall Street Journal, won several prestigious reporting awards, and has an MFA from Goucher College.