Spanish Recognitions: The Roads to the Present - Hardcover

Settle, Mary Lee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393020274 ISBN 13: 9780393020274

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2004

Synopsis

The author recalls her journey into the heart of Spain at the age of eighty-two, revealing the illusions and romanticism she carried into her voyage and the truths she gained along the way. 13,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Lee Settle is the author of many novels, including The Beulah Quintet and Blood Ties, for which she received a National Book Award. She lives in Kinsale, Virginia.

From Publishers Weekly:

Traveling through Spain's central provinces from Castile to the southern coast in a "beautiful small rental car, a Real; stick shift, balance and weight perfect for speeding," novelist Settle (The Beulah Quintet; Blood Ties) makes a point of this being a solo trek ("To be alone by choice is one of the great luxuries of the world"). With this engaging, lucid recollection, personal, but not self-centered, she's the perfect guide for a vicarious journey through a land where "history intrudes everywhere." Footprints of Visigoths, Romans, Moors, Muslims and Falangists appear all along the path; Cervantes looms large. Settle encounters El Cid in Zamora, Unamuno in Salamanca and Lorca and St. John of the Cross in Granada. St. Teresa, who "wasn't afraid of God, the king, the papal nuncio who tried to stop her, or the devil himself," emerges in Avila, and in Tordesillas, Settle finds the queen whom history refers to as Juana la Loca de Amor, but whom Settle sees as "the victim of a hostile takeover." She sights the explorers (Cortes, Pizarro, de Soto, Balboa) in their Extremadura hometowns and recounts the Knights Templar's tale in Jerez de los Cabelleros. Settle, an "eighty-two-year-old grownup," delights in discovery, is curious about the old, possessing an intellectual-quest spirit and ageless wisdom. Clearly in love with the "people so beautiful," "the scene so handsome," Settle invites readers to follow in her footsteps and see out of her eyes. Map, 12 pages of illus. not seen by PW.
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About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0393020274
• ISBN 13: 9780393020274
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320