When the Ground Turns in its Sleep

When the Ground Turns in its Sleep, by Sylvia Sellers-Garcia
REVIEW: This is a first novel by this author and I loved it. It has excellent writing and a unique story. A young American man's immigrant father dies and the young man is compelled to visit his father's homeland of Guatamala to learn about his parents' past. Nitido is mistaken by the people of his father's village as the new priest and he stays on in this role, thinking that he might get more information out of the people this way. He is not Catholic and is for sure not trained as a priest, but he does it anyway. I loved how the author wove an earlier episode with plagiarism when Nitido was in college with his life of plagiarism in the little village. It was a theme that I've never read before, born out in a whole novel. I also really liked how the title was explained - how time colors your view of events and how your perspective changes as you get older and hopefully wiser. The ground appears to be a certain color in the morning, a different color at midday, and then a darker, richer color as night falls and "the ground turns in its sleep". A great analogy, I thought, for the novel as a whole, and for Nitido specifically as he learns about his parents' past and matures himself as the story progresses. There was also an interesting undertone of spiritual warfare in the little Guatemalan village that Nitido visited that was alluded to, but I would like to have seen it more fully developed. I also was a bit disappointed in how Nitido dealt with another death of a person close to him, since his father's death sent him on a journey, both geographically and emotionally. The second death seemed like a footnote and his character seemed like a person who would have responded in some way to it.
I am looking forward to more of Sellers-Garcia's work.
STARS: 4.5 out of 5
RATING: PG (no inappropriate language or relationships)
FAVORITE QUOTES: "It came as a complete surprise: the idea that silences in Rio Roto could arise not only from secrecy but also from doubt."
"The stones [of your past] cannot be left behind; they fill your pockets, their added weight affecting slightly the manner of each new step." [Sadly and clearly, not a Christian.]
"It's because she altered my thinking that I can't see where her ideas end and mine begin. I don't know how it's possible to distinguish one from the other. I don't know what purpose it would even serve, when so many of the things we think about came from somewhere else. From this perspective, it's impossible to avoid being a compilation of stolen words and ideas."
[See the plagiarism theme?!!?]