In the last few months, I have noticed a change in the historical fiction I am drawn to. Rather than the stories centered around the World Wars, I have also started to read books that are set in different historical times. While I have not been able to dedicate more time to my History Reading Map project (which was primarily non-fiction), I love finding fictional books that have deep roots in history and that advance my knowledge about the world. Reyna Grande’s A Ballad of Love and Glory is a beautifully written book set during the Mexican War. Having never studied North American history, pretty much this whole book was news to me and I am so grateful to have read it and learned so much. Take a look at the synopsis and then read on for my thoughts.
A forgotten war. An unforgettable romance.
The year is 1846. After the controversial annexation of Texas, the US Army marches south to provoke war with México over the disputed Río Grande boundary.
Ximena Salomé is a gifted Mexican healer who dreams of building a family with the man she loves on the coveted land she calls home. But when Texas Rangers storm her ranch and shoot her husband dead, her dreams are burned to ashes. Vowing to honor her husband’s memory and defend her country, Ximena uses her healing skills as an army nurse on the frontlines of the ravaging war.
Meanwhile, John Riley, an Irish immigrant in the Yankee army desperate to help his family escape the famine devastating his homeland, is sickened by the unjust war and the unspeakable atrocities against his countrymen by nativist officers. In a bold act of defiance, he swims across the Río Grande and joins the Mexican Army—a desertion punishable by execution. He forms the St. Patrick’s Battalion, a band of Irish soldiers willing to fight to the death for México’s freedom.
When Ximena and John meet, a dangerous attraction blooms between them. As the war intensifies, so does their passion. Swept up by forces with the power to change history, they fight not only for the fate of a nation but for their future together.
Heartbreaking and lyrical, Reyna Grande’s spellbinding saga, inspired by true events and historical figures, brings these two unforgettable characters to life and illuminates a largely forgotten moment in history that impacts the US-México border to this day.
Will Ximena and John survive the chaos of this bitter war, or will their love be devoured along with the land they strive to defend?
Content Notes include War, Injury/injury detail, Rape, Alcoholism, Confinement, Death.
Thoughts on A Ballad of Love and Glory
Let’s start off by taking a look at the main characters:
John Riley is an Irishman and actually existed in the flesh. He decided to join the Yankees army, hoping they would keep their promise of better pay and promotion, promises that the English had so easily broken back home. I found it quite interesting that the US was enlisting soldiers from other countries to fight their war. War is bad enough but to take advantage of lives from other places while protecting your own people shows how little human life mattered in conflicts.
Through John I gained some historical background of Ireland. This book has been highly educational in teaching the history around parts of the world that are largely ignored. I had not thought about the plight of the Irish people until I met John. Growing up, European history in my education mostly focused around the Roman empire, Greece, France and, of course, England. John is a devout Catholic and he soon finds that the Yankees (Protestants) are not open to other religions or branches of Christianity. The people from his country and other religious backgrounds are treated poorly just because of their beliefs. When he loses a countryman to the Yankees’ brutality in camp, he decides to join the Mexican side and that is where he meets Ximena.
Ximena won my heart. Renya shares at the beginning of the book how she read this poem that mentioned a woman named Ximena, letting the people know that the soldiers were coming and that scene sparked this character. A healer and wartime nurse, even before this Mexican War, Ximena’s family was part of the conflict when Texas separated from Mexico, years prior. She understands the tug of war between different ideals and goals. Even if she ends up in grave danger many times, she is not afraid to voice her opinions, point out right from wrong while being compassionate and loving to those who need her help. I loved the camaraderie she built with the soldiers in her care.
Themes of the Book
There are fours themes I want to highlight from this book:
Immigration is the one I least expected to find in A Ballad of Love and Glory. While immigration is an integral part of wartime conflicts, it is usually portrayed in the sense of the ones being invaded moving to safer territories. I have never read immigration in terms of soldiers from other countries helping and potentially moving to a country they were hired to fight. Through John’s experiences in Ireland, we also glimpse religious tensions and the role they play in making people abandon the groups that disrespect them.
A Ballad of Love and Glory, in a heartbreaking manner through Ximena, is able to convey the effect of changing boundaries and how our perception of where we belong is rooted in our knowledge of history. Reyna speaks more to this in her interview, and because she describes it so well, here is an excerpt from the interview:
How has researching the history of places, for your books and yourself, changed you?
I’ve been living in the US since I was 9. Now I’m 46. Through all these years of trying to make a home here, I struggled trying to find my place in this country, trying to “earn” my right to be here. Yet, as a Mexican, as a Spanish speaker, I’ve been made to feel that I don’t belong here, that I’m an outsider, a foreigner. Researching the history, digging into the creation of the US-Mexico border, was empowering. In my US history classes we never learned about the US invasion of Mexico in the 1840s, the unjust war that it waged against the Mexican people in order to take their land. We don’t learn that the American Southwest was once Mexico. No, I had to take a History of Mexico class to learn about this. Knowing all this history of both my countries helped me to reframe how I see myself and understanding that I am not a foreigner in these lands, as I’ve been led to believe.
Reyna Grande, author of A Ballad of Love and Glory
My experience with looking into my home country’s history supports this fact that so often we continue to portray the oppressor in a good light. What I don’t understand is why. Are we trying to hide away from trauma? Just the other day with The Girl and the Goddess, I was questioning the time around partition and how the years around are summarized in history as ‘time of partition’ rather than sharing the true mechanics of forced migration and unclear boundaries. Why did this not make it to the classrooms of my generation even though our grandparents were affected by this major event in our country’s history and physically displaced by it?
Related to immigration is invasion. A Ballad of Love and Glory is the most detailed book I have read in terms of sharing what happens on the battlefield. This is no longer limited to finding a wounded soldier, but actually the physical acts of organizing and training soldiers, working with ammunition, understanding military tactics and formations. This book is more real than most historical fiction I have read because it is about a soldier and a nurse working at the battlefield. Reyna researched this very thoroughly and, in the process, has been able to expose aspects of history that remain buried to people.
Related to invasion and war is the theme of glory. War brings glory. There is glory in being able to die an honorable death, to be able to fight for one’s morals and beliefs. One of the lessons that Hindu epics like the Mahabharata teach is that while individually, we all have morals and sticking to them is who we are, morals of different people don’t always align. And that leads to conflict. If escalated, that becomes war. In the case of General Santa Anna, his desire to be the champion of the Mexican people comes at a huge cost to the people, and no one even knows it until it is too late. Glory can be achieved but at what price? And who pays this price?
Our love for our country, our morals, our beliefs are what keep us going. They give us the strength to persevere, to be able to live in the present while facing grief and sorrow and learning to make them a part of us. A Ballad of Love and Glory is a love story but not just in the sense of two people falling in love. It is about love for a country, love for fellow countrymen and hope for a better future.
The world has existed for a long time. The time that humans have spent on it, plundering and habitating has been even shorter in the grand scheme of when life first started on Earth. We have done horrible things and we will probably continue to. The Forty of Rules of Love by Elif Shafak describes this beautifully while comparing two centuries that seem far apart: “In many ways the twenty-first century is not that different from the thirteenth century. Both will be recorded in history as times of unprecedented religious clashes, cultural misunderstandings, and a general sense of insecurity and fear of the Other.”
The key with recorded history though is that it is accessible to those who want to look for it. Sometimes, it is hard to know what we are looking for when we do not know what it is. This is where historical fiction books like A Ballad of Love and Glory come in. With an author’s skill of research and storytelling, readers are exposed to history that they may not know existed or they did not know they were interested in.
Will you pick up this book?
Add it to your shelves on Goodreads and Storygraph.
I hope you enjoyed reading my review of Reyna Grande’s A Ballad of Love and Glory! I am very excited to host Reyna for an interview on the 26th so stay tuned for that! You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and website.
Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Cover Photo on Unsplash
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