Every time Marc Zimmerman publishes a new book, I celebrate. He is a wonderful writer ... [who] doesn't disappoint." Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird's Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, The House of Broken Angels and much more.
Both epic and personal, Marc Zimmerman's novel memoir-style novel tells how his divorced Jewish American protagonist, Mel, marries Lena, a brilliant Central American activist/intellectual and endangers his academic career and life. He and Lena participate in anti-war, anti-Fascist and pro-Latino rights struggles; both join in Nicaragua's anti-somocista movement, while Lena continues on her academic path and Mel fights to keep his intellectual calling alive even as he takes on jobs that have him fighting against migrant worker exploitation, sexual abuse, and drug-dealing gang violence. Breaking up and joining once again, the couple work in the Sandinista Revolution, only to break up again, with Mel finding work in a Cuban refugee camp and finally winning a university home in a journey that painfully brings down the curtain on his closest human relationship.
Like Zimmerman's No Light from Heaven, this book is about a marriage, but now it is a "second time around"—one which emerges out of the late 60s, projecting new forms of radical thought and action, as tensions intimate, academic and political turn toward revolution and rupture. The author's Sandino on the Border tells parts of this story, but here is the complete account, of every issue, mistake and adventure, in a narrative of thwarted ambitions, revolution, conflict, and heartbreak about a man and woman seeking to resolve their conflicts as they move from San Diego and Mexican borderlands to Europe, Minnesota, Caracas, Nicaragua and Chicago.
Marc Zimmerman's memory fictions include Martin and Marvin, The Italian Daze, and The Short of It All, as well as Genesis, Two Ways West, No Light from Heaven, The Border Trilogy and now Managua Mon Amour (Nevermore), the final book of the first cycle of his Illusion of Memories series (Floricanto Press, 2016-2020) in which memories tend toward fictional form while recounting the author's life and the many who mark his path from birth to the near end of his days.