The Mexican Flyboy - (Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Américas) by Alfredo Véa (Paperback)

About the Book

Crossing genres and blending comedy with tragedy, Alfredo Véa imagines a world where we can rewrite our pasts and heal the wounds inflicted by history. Inviting comparisons to the work of James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges, Junot Díaz and Michael Chabon, this powerful book is like nothing else you have ever read.

Book Synopsis

What if we could travel back in time to save our heroes from painful deaths? What if we could rewrite history to protect and reward the innocent victims of injustice? In Alfredo Véa's daring new novel, one man does just that, taking readers on a series of remarkable journeys.

Abandoned as a child, brooding and haunted as an adult, Simon Vegas, "the Mexican Flyboy," toils for years to repair a time machine that fell into his hands in Vietnam. With the help of his friend, eccentric Hephaestus Segundo, Simon uses the device to fly through time. Wherever acts of human cruelty take place, in the past or in the present, the machine lets him lift the suffering away and deliver them to a utopian afterlife. Blending magical realism, science fiction, history, and comic-book fantasy, The Mexican Flyboy swoops readers from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the vineyards of Northern California, from Ethel Rosenberg's execution to Joan of Arc's pyre, in a tale of justice, trauma, regret, and redemption.

The dead pass through the narrative in a parade at once heartbreaking and hopeful, among them Vincent van Gogh and Malcolm X, Ernest Hemingway and Amadou Diallo. But the living--Simon's pregnant wife, Elena, his old friend Ezekiel Stein, prisoner Lenny Hudson--all throw doubt onto Simon's story. Is Simon truly a "magus," transporting martyrs to a shared community in paradise? Or is he just a man broken by loss, guilt, and the trauma of war, hopelessly lost in an illusion of his own making?

Crossing genres and blending comedy with tragedy, Alfredo Véa imagines a world where we can rewrite our pasts and heal the wounds inflicted by history. Inviting comparisons to the work of James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges, Junot Díaz and Michael Chabon, this powerful book is like nothing else you have ever read.

Review Quotes

"This impressive novel gives a human-rights spin to the familiar science fiction theme of time travel. The vividly fanciful and intensely passionate story grapples memorably with the long history of violence and the need to escape or redeem it."--Publishers Weekly


"[Alfredo] Véa dives into magical realism headfirst in this hallucinatory fantasy that reads like a blend of John Steinbeck and Robert A. Heinlein. It's a dizzying novel that combines Véa's solid prose style with a vivid imagination and an authentic cultural brio. A lush fantasy in which a man must unwind time itself to right the world's wrongs."--Kirkus Reviews

"A new book by Alfredo Véa is cause for celebration. Véa, creator of the American classic La Maravilla, returns here with a moving and profound story. I read it with gratitude. Get it. Start dancing."--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird's Daughter

"Alfredo Véa writes with the pen of a magician, the heart of a saint, and a truth seeker's passion for justice. I'm in awe of this brilliant and moving novel." --Elizabeth McKenzie, author of MacGregor Tells the World

"With heart, imagination, and wit, Alfredo Véa gives us a rollicking tale of magical realism and science fiction, historical acuity and human truths. If Gabriel García Márquez were to magically collaborate with E. L. Doctorow, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Ray Bradbury, the result would be something as delightfully moving as The Mexican Flyboy." --Rilla Askew, author of Fire in Beulah and Kind of Kin

"Anyone who enjoys magical realism would be committing a crime by skipping this remarkable piece of work."--Foreword Reviews