Product Description

Kevin McIlvoy's Hyssop is a remarkable novel filled with kindness, truth, and magic--a story that celebrates friendship and love while exploring the complexities of a simple faith that enriches materially impoverished lives. It is a gorgeous patchwork of memory lovingly sewn together by Red Greetaltruistic petty thief and guileless grifter-who has spent many days of his eighty-seven years behind bars in Las Almas, New Mexico. Twice married-the second time, while in jail, to his lifelong love Recita Holguin-Red has sampled pleasures available only to those capable of embracing life and its temptations without shame or fear. But his sins have been as memorable as his adventures-transgressions he shares freely with Bishop Francisco Velasco, Red's lifelong best friend and confessor, and his one-time rival for the affections of his first wife, Cecilia. In telling how he has loved and been loved, in confessing how he has sinned and inspired others to sin, Red Greet seeks hyssop, the substance that might wash his soul clean.

Product Details

• Published on: 1999-10-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Red Greet, the 85-year-old mason and part-time thief of McIlvoy's deeply satisfying novel, tells you right at the outset, "I've always liked a Bible kind of story that adds on and keeps on adding." Following that principle, Red saturates his main story, about his love for the two women in his life?Cecilia, his wife, who died 20 years before the book opens, and her friend, Recita?with anecdotes of the local folkloric Catholicism that takes saints and miracles for facts. Red is haunted by the fact that Cecilia's own affections were divided between him and his best friend, Francisco Velasco, a priest and, in Red's view, a saint. McIlvoy (Little Peg; The Fifth Station) has beautifully rendered the soft, Spanish-inflected rhythms of English as it is spoken on the border, and Red is the classic picaresque rascal, even though his age endows him with the quasi-biblical stature appropriate to an account of a farming community where families are rooted for generations in each other's histories. The traditions that give symbolic shape to the great passages in life?birth, marriage, death?still hold weight here. When Francisco gives Cecilia the last rites, Red, who is looking on, realizes that they are consummating their lifelong passion for one another. But Red also recognizes that, in spite of the rivalry, he and Francisco are also bound by a tie of love, which is the sacrament holding Red's memorable, intelligently romantic story together.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Red Greet is an endearing and energetic 87-year-old intractable petty criminal who tells his life story "like a coyote spitting up his own bones." Born and raised in Las Almas, New Mexico, in the ritual and tradition of Catholicism, Red is now newly married to a woman he has loved since before his first wife died some 25 years ago. In weaving the tales of his lifetime, this lover of life and people reveals his longing for salvation--the search for hyssop, a substance with the power to cleanse his soul. Central to the unfolding of Red's life story is his relationship of more than 70 years with Bishop Frank Velasco, his friend and confessor. With an underlying quality that is decidedly more spiritual than religious, Red's stories are a celebration of the poignant mix of wonder and wisdom known only to the elderly. There is a gentleness about this book that does not diminish its power, and serves to illuminate the often evanescent connection of faith and ritual to everyday life, love, struggle, and eventually salvation. Grace Fill

Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever: Stories
"A radiant, mysterious novel, brilliantly lit by hard-won faith, hyssop reminds us that we are all part of the lost tribe of the unchosen, and that despite that we can be saved by the language of love."

Customer Reviews

the simplicity of beauty
i have heard kevin mcilvoy read from the title chapter of this book, and his extraordinary sense of voice and passion are what drove me to read the entire book. i have been told that he did a lot of work and interviews to put together this amazing book. it paid off. it truly did.

Sweet, gritty, joyful
This novel inspires hunger. For life, for love, for NOW. Red Greet, an honest thief, forces us to confront the perfect imperfections of our lives, and to learn to cherish them. He is a great tasty chunk of character made chunkier through his storytelling - jewels spill from his chapped lips on every page. The grace of aging is so tenderly woven through the story. The shifting qualities of love and lust and beauty that gently evolve in these pages feels visceral, unlike the plastic veneer of the media culture. This is a story of paradox, of becoming, acceptance, and mostly self-love. It is a beautiful, compelling, and sweetly funny novel.

Learned from Steinbeck and then outdid the master.
Kevin McIlvoy must have studied at John Steinbeck's feet and then surpassed his teacher. The common man and his humanity made glorious. My heart grew.