Review: A Heart on a Shelf

From the beginning of A Heart on a Shelf, I realized I just might be seeing the story that will tell me definitively how intensely a young Mexican woman’s personal ambition coupled with the power of her natural love of heart and home clashes with a traditional Mexican culture that struggles as it tries to extrude her.

Then, I realized such a novel could be written by a spin-doctor – in a downtown Manhattan coffee shop – and still, with a few carefully-researched details, seem authentic.

But with my reading of the first two chapters of A Heart on a Shelf, my doubt about Diana Negrete Monahan’s origin melted.

You want to read A Heart on a Shelf because the clear Hispanic “voice” of this daring, personal new novel speaks insistently, authentically, communicating both a perfectly wonderful humility of expression and an intense Mexican pride and heat.

A Heart on a Shelf is “Pura Raza!” as it is said, “Us!”

You want to read pre-cartel A Heart on a Shelf because your imagination will harsh you in the face with what you already suspect is today’s millennial Mexico. Reading this maiden-flight novel, you will be fourteen again – street-wandering with Amalia – sweating in the pounding Tijuana sun and roadside dust, suitcase in one hand, your pillow and blanket under your other arm. There you will feel abandoned. You will experience, with Amalia and her mother, ”utter vulgarity” as only unescorted women in Tijuana can.

Amalia is only a social-throw-away girl! Nothing but a little brown bird. There is no Quincean᷉era celebration for Amalia; her mother and she have barely food enough, but the power of her dream lofts both women. Amalia gets a sewing job working at Eva’s bridal shop, and her strong income and notoriety as a gifted designer super-sonic her and Eva into a life of dignity.

Amalia marries a United States citizen, Hiram Juan Delgado, son of a tradition-bound Tijuana business owner. But remember! Carrying her pillow and blanket down that filthy Tijuana gauntlet, Amalia had sworn she would never depend on anyone else for survival.

Because her husband is deployed to Korea as part of a U.S. Army tank crew, alone Amalia is forced, in a dangerous, hyper-high-blood-pressure cesarean to nearly die as she gives the light to their first-born.

Her husband Hiram briefly home, then re-deployed, as Amalia’s and her partner Eva’s business and notoriety begin to completely gulp their time and energy, Amalia discovers herself again with child! The draining work load of their wedding shop production schedule goes toxic.

You want to read A Heart on a Shelf because it orbits the planet Romance, where two love-at-first-sight people with the cojones to be direct yet truly listen to one another play with the fire of their elemental love.

A Heart on a Shelf tells itself in an unadorned, direct style not once crippled by trendy buzz-words or the repetitious, bullet-plate syntax common today.

When you read A Heart on a Shelf you will glimpse deep into Diana Negrete Monahan’s heart – whose debut novel has at last been forced out into print by a life-time of cherished longing.