Don Miguel Lehumada: discoverer of liquid from the sun's rays an occult romance of Mexico and the United States — Context and Discussion

A Voice That Treats the Impossible as Ordinary

Greenleaf's narrator describes the discovery of liquid from the sun's rays and the ability to remember past lives with the same calm specificity used for newspaper accounts and jail crowds. For instance, the chapter titles themselves—such as 'The Plunger from Kansas Confesses to the Crime He Committed 150 Years Ago, in 1898'—present reincarnation as a matter of fact. This flatness creates a peculiar tension: the reader must accept the supernatural without the usual narrative cues of wonder or doubt. The voice rarely pauses to explain or justify; it simply reports. When Marriet Motuble 'reports herself dead,' the phrasing is bureaucratic, not eerie. This stylistic choice makes the occult elements feel embedded in the world rather than extraordinary.

Pacing Through Crowds and Confinement

The excerpt from later in the novel shows a marked shift in pace. The description of the crowd around the jail is meticulous: the 'rabble' grows, the police double, soldiers are stationed, and the governor's orders forbid arrests. The prose slows to a crawl, tracking the movements of 'threes and fours' wandering away. Then, abruptly, the scene jumps to a secret meeting in a storage room, where a tall man addresses the conspirators. The pacing here is deliberate, building suspense through accumulation of detail rather than action. This contrasts with earlier chapters where supernatural events—like Helen flying—are dispatched in a single sentence. The novel thus alternates between expansive, almost documentary-like passages and compressed, matter-of-fact marvels.

Recurring Details and Their Narrative Function

Several details recur across the excerpts. The 'Ebony Fluid' and 'Memory Fluid' are introduced as scientific substances, but their effects are described in legal and moral terms: the conspirators 'will their souls away' before taking Ebony Fluid. The setting of Chihuahua is rendered with specific place names—the Alameda, the Sierra Madre—but the political context (annexation to the US) is treated as a given, not explained. The character of the 'Plunger from Kansas' appears in multiple chapter titles, suggesting a figure whose past crime drives the plot. These recurring elements—fluids, reincarnation, political conspiracy—are woven into the narrative without fanfare, creating a world where the extraordinary is routine. The reader must track these details across shifts in pace and voice.

Readers should attend to how Greenleaf uses chapter titles as mini-spoilers, revealing plot points before they unfold. The narrative's willingness to leap between registers—from dry reportage to sudden flight—requires flexibility. Note also the dedication's bitter tone: 'with sorrow in my heart and much pity for the weak who put stumbling blocks in my path.' This personal note may color the novel's treatment of its characters and their struggles.

There’s a strange comfort in how Sue Greenleaf’s Mexico feels both vanished and vivid, like a half-remembered dream. It reminds me, oddly, of returning to The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Part 14 — A Reader’s Guide — that same sense of wandering through a world where every turn is familiar yet somehow tuned differently, quiet and a little sad. I think about that sometimes.