Under the Feet of Jesus

by Helena Maria Viramontes Narrated by Nancy Ticotin

Overview

A moving and powerful novel about the lives of the men, women, and children who endure a second-class existence and labor under dangerous conditions as migrant workers in California's fields.

“Viramontes depicts this world with sensuous physicality...working firmly in the social-realist vein of Steinbeck's*The Grapes of Wrath*and Upton Sinclair's*The Jungle.”-Publishers Weekly

At the center of this powerful tale is Estrella, a girl about to cross the perilous border to womanhood. What she knows of life comes from her mother, who has survived abandonment by her husband in a land that treats her as if she were invisible, even though she and her children pick the crops of the farms that feed its people. But within Estrella, seeds of growth and change are stirring. And in the arms of Alejo, they burst into a full, fierce flower as she tastes the joy and pain of first love. Pushed to the margins of society, she learns to fight back and is able to help the young farmworker she loves when his ambitions and very life are threatened in a harvest of death.
*
Infused with the beauty of the California landscape and shifting splendors of the passing seasons juxtaposed with the bleakness of poverty, this vividly imagined novel is worthy of the people it celebrates and whose story it tells so magnificently. The simple lyrical beauty of Viramontes' prose, her haunting use of image and metaphor, and the urgency of her themes all announce*Under the Feat of Jesus*as a landmark work of American fiction.

Winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This first novel adds another important chapter to the existing body of literature about the Mexican-American experience. Viramontes (The Moths and Other Stories), who teaches at Cornell, does not offer deep characterization or psychological complexity here. Instead, working firmly in the social-realist vein of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, she paints a harrowing ensemble portrait of migrant laborers in California's fruit fields. The family of 13-year-old Estrella, and the others with whom they travel and work, burn under 109-degree heat until the backs of their necks sting; women nurse their babies in the backs of pickups. Viramontes depicts this world with a sensuous physicality, as when Petra, Estrella's mother, digs a fingernail into the melting tar of a blacktop highway. And the close quarters in which her characters are forced to live promotes a collective intimacy that Viramontes evokes with a sure hand, conveying the solace to be found in solidarity while never losing sight of the fact that these people enjoy absolutely no privacy. Slow and wandering at the outset, the novel picks up after a small plane releases a white shower of deadly pesticide, which washes over the face of Alejo, a teenager who is perched in a peach tree, busy stealing the soft, ripe fruit. Alejo is drenched with poison, much to the horror of Estrella, who has fallen in love with him. Alejo becomes sick with what the migrants call ``dao of the fields''-so sick that the de facto leader of the workers wants to leave him behind. But Estrella makes it her mission to help save him, and she is driven to great sacrifice in order to do so. Into this unforgiving world, Viramontes pours archetypal themes of the passage of time, young love, the bonds and tensions between generations and, above all, the straining of the spirit to transcend miserable material conditions. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

Praise for Under the Feet of Jesus
 
“Brilliantly executed...intense...exhibits a command of the potential magic inherent in the written word that most writers can only aspire to...a remarkable voice.”—Sunday Oregonian
 
“Captivating...vivid.”—Orlando Sentinel
 
“Lyrical...a compelling debut...Viramontes displays gifts of understanding and storytelling unusual for a first novel.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
“A beautiful story...Her writing is tactile and sonorous, but there is something more...I wanted to meet Viramontes’ characters, squat down, and eat with them.”—Alfredo Vea, Jr., author of La Maravilla
 
“Tempers a restrained fury at social injustice with lovely lyrical grace...Viramontes has a keen eye for finding beauty.”—Elle
 
“Gives a fierce poetic voice to the lives of Piscadores in the California vineyards and orchards...Viramontes writes with an irresistible authority that compels our recognition and wonder.”—Judith Grossman, author of Her Own Terms
 
“A literary feat and a powerful political statement.”—Seattle Times & Post-Intelligencer
 
“A lyrical tale… Viramontes’ images linger, and the book will linger for a while, too.”—Washington Post Book World

"A moving, heartbreaking tale of loss and survival."—Julia Alvarez, author of How The García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies

“Stunning...blends lyricism, harsh realism and concern for social justice.”—Newsweek

“The best literary fiction makes its villains out of situations rather than people, and finds its hero's not in noble victors but in the spirit of ordinary men and women. In this lyrical tale of a fruit-picking family in some nameless weedy place, there is no sadistic overseer, unless it is the pitiless sun, which sucks sweat and hope from laboring bodies. Viramontes's novel comes the closest of any yet to universalizing this appalling life.”—Joanne Omang, The Washington Post

“An exciting read...Throughout this rich novel, Viramontes brings us into her world and we fall under her spell.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
“A remarkable tale...a wealth of robust colors and magic...Readers will take to the lushness of Under the Feet of Jesus like a thirsty traveler to a well.”—Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s List 

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169471328
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	12/18/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	944,084

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