Characters, real and imagined in The Mystery of Things:

Our Lady of Guadalupe

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe figures prominently in The Mystery of Things. Known to Catholics as “Mother of the Americas”, her miraculous image, which was given in 1532 to the Aztec Christian, St. Juan Diego, a mere decade after the catastrophic conquest of Mexico by the Spanish, yearly draws millions of visiters to her shrine in Mexico City, particularly around the time of her feast, December 12.

For a larger close-up of Our Lady, click on the picture to the right.

Here’s an excerpt from chapter two of the novel in which the image first appears:

James’s eyes had faltered on a large picture on the wall behind him. It was the astonishing color that caught his eye first, the dusty but luminescent turquoise of a floor length mantle covering the head and body of a dark haired young woman. Golden rays streamed outwards from behind the woman’s back, as if she were blocking out the noonday sun. It was in the same instant that James realized that something in the woman’s gentle face reminded him of Lupe Cruz tht he also realized, by the woman’s reverent posture and folded hands, that he was looking at an icon of the Virgin Mary, painted in a style such as he had never seen.

Then James felt as if he couldn’t breathe, because he had seen this picture before, or rather something very much like it, in a waking dream from his other life—a vision of beauty, glory and terror, which he had spent the better part of the last three years trying to blot from his memory.

A birdlike tremolo warbled in James’s mind, and his nostrils filled with the forgotten scent of roses.