
As Amparo’s culture erodes and her hopes confront seemingly insurmountable obstacles, she resorts to both traditional wisdom and personal determination to take a decision about her children’s future that no mother should have to make.
Drawing on rich cultural detail to illuminate family relationships in passages that are sometimes realistic and sometimes magical or humorous, The Path of the Jaguar is a novel of deep feeling and surprising reversals set in a social and geographical landscape that is as unforgettable as it is unforgiving.
“What is the way forward, for Amparo? Is she — like the jaguar on her handmade bag, like Castillo, like Henighan, like so many of us — receding further from her origins? There’s a moving passage dedicated to the idea of a “woman acting on her fantasies,” but we’re reminded, particularly by Amparo’s bold, final act that “any path we choose involves loneliness.””