Denise Chávez

"This posthumously published bilingual novel by Jim Sagel re-enacts the traditional Christmas play, Los pastores, as the backdrop for a parallel story set in the fictional New Mexican village of San Buenaventura where a young woman has just given birth to a baby boy. The infant is Jesús (Jesus in Los pastores) and his biological mother is Marta (Mary). Sagel informs the reader in the first paragraph that the mother has only twenty-three days to live....