User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This is my favorite damn book of all time ever. If you don't like it, I'm liable to punch you in the genitals.
Ostensibly, the book is about a water-rights squabble in a small town in New Mexico. But the book is so much more: the differences between the Mexican and American cultures, believing in miracles, political dissidence, and all of the ridiculously awesome characters that the author breathes life into.
There's Amarante Cordova, the ageless wonder who has been dying since birth, only to outlive many of his own children; there's one-armed Onofre Martinez, who claims that he lost his appendage to a butterfly; pugnacious Joe Mondragon, the pint sized protagonist who starts the whole squabble; Milo, his guilt ridden lawyer who has to reconcile his white American background with his Hispanic wife; Horsethief Shorty, the foreman at the Dancing Trout ranch and crony to main villain Ladd Devine III; and a whole assortment of special agents, water rights lawyers, body shop and plumbing shop owners, angels and car thieving senile grandmothers.
The book unfolds in a blissfully organic, sprawling way. You'll follow different characters in different chapters, as they all deal with their own trials and tribulations, usually working at cross purposes with other characters. Things build to a climax involving the whole host of characters, and for a change in a town called Miracle, the good guys win one.
Rating: really liked it
I know
The Milagro Beanfield War is a cult classic, but based on a cursory perusal of the reviews, I’d say it’s a book that you either love or don’t. I won’t say you love it or hate it because I found very little actual animosity toward it in the negative reviews. Those readers just couldn’t seem to get into the book.
My feelings about the book are somewhere between the love and don’t love ends of the spectrum. For me, reading it was like an unsatisfying/unsuccessful romantic endeavor. Part 1 of the book was a bit tedious and confusing with the introduction of so many characters and backstory. Kind of like when you first start getting to know someone with whom you have an inclination to become romantically involved. You get a lot of information about the person’s family, friends, and past life, but most of it just sails past you because you want to know about the person rather than all the peripheral stuff. I came close to giving up on the book at this stage. The main reason I didn’t is because when you grew up in New Mexico and currently live here, it’s hard to admit that you’ve never read
The Milagro Beanfield War or
Bless Me Ultima or at least one Tony Hillerman book. (I finished
Bless Me Ultima a month or so ago, by the way.)
Once you get to Part 2…a little shy of a hundred pages in…things start to pick up. The actual story starts to progress and there’s some action that creates and builds the tension. There are still a lot of characters and backstory thrown in, but you can start to see more clearly how those contribute to the story. The primary characters also start to feel more real and personal. You’ve reached the part of the relationship where the two of you are getting closer. You share more personal information with each other. You start to understand how all that info about friends, family, and past life reveal to you more of who your potential partner really is. You become more comfortable with the physical aspects of your relationship…the touches, caresses, and kisses.
As the story progresses through subsequent Parts, the humor of the beginning subsides and the tension builds through actions and deeper character development. There are two or three very moving "reflective" sections related to specific characters. At this point, it was hard for me to put the book down. In your relationship, you want to spend as much time as possible in the presence of the other person. The sexual tension is building and you’re eagerly and enthusiastically looking forward to your first night together.
The tension of the story builds like a wave to the crisis point, but It never crests. It just resolves itself almost pathetically and washes up harmlessly on the shore. There’s follow-up to it, but nothing very satisfying as far as bringing any kind of closure to the story. You’ve had sex with the person you thought might be “the one,” but it was just sex. It didn’t bring you the closeness and soul-completing oneness you thought it would. You stay for the rest of the night because it’s kind of expected. You get together a few more times but you both realize things won’t work out because something undefinable is missing. When your friends ask how the relationship is going, you find it difficult to admit to them that, in the end, there was just no spark there...that their hopes for you happiness have gone unmet.
I may at some point try another John Nichols book. He himself didn’t think
The Milagro Beanfield War was his most profound work. If there’s enough of an ember left somewhere down the line, maybe I’ll try one of the two or three that he felt were the best reflections of what he strove to do with his writing.
Rating: really liked it
Que Viva Snuffy Ledoux! I read this book 35 years ago for the first time when I was fifteen years old. It remains one of my all time favorites. After re-reading - because one of my friends told me I reminded him of Amarante Cordova - and because I always considered myself to be more of a Jose Mondragon - the themes remain contemporary. They remind me why I consider this timeless piece of literature to be such a great demonstration of artistry and craftsmanship.Milagro Beanfield War is an enchanting story, told by a man who has a deep and abiding respect for the people he wrote about. His descriptions of the colorful characters and the beautiful landscapes reveal a man who is faithful to describing northern New Mexico Latino culture with clarity and sensitivity to all their quirky nuances.
Nichols reminds me why I love the northern part of the state so much. The rugged terrain is as breath-taking beautiful as its hard-scrabble inhabitants. I am convinced their vibrant culture and world view has been shaped by the land in which they live. Their ingenuity and tenacity are not as caricatured as you might be given to conclude according to Nichols' descriptions. Their bravado, sense of pride, chutzpah are not an exaggeration at all. Moreover, extraordinary things do happen up there and what is even more unusual is that is is not seen as anything out of the ordinary at all. Nichols does such a fantastic job of describing the terrain that he reminds me why I love Northern New Mexico - Taos in particular - so much.
Plainly put, this story is entertaining, comical and it sheds light on yet another group of Americans whose peculiarities spice up an already delicious story.
I felt a connection to all of the characters. However, if pressed to choose one, I believe my favorite would be the immortal Amarante Cordova who buys bullets for his antique .45 with food stamps.
Aside from Pacheco's huge, white pet pig that continually escapes and wreaks havoc in Milagro, the cast of characters include;
Joe Mondragon, the sawed-off banty rooster. The protagonist who unwittingly starts the war when he decides to irrigate his little bean field - of course the symbolism should not be wasted here as beans cause gas and Joe's little field caused a big stink.
Bernabe Montoya, the tired though politically astute sheriff whose comic-tragic life is measured by making mountains out of mole hills and mole hills out of mountains,
Seferino Pacheco, the illiterate old man who can nonchalantly critique Steinbeck, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Platero, Asturias, Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda but spends the lions' share of his time haplessly chasing down his wayward, errant pet pig,
Onofre Martinez, the one armed enigma who lost his arm to a fleet of butterflies and whose claim to shame is marked by having a son become a state police officer,
Charlie Bloom, the Harvard Lawyer cum honorary Chicano and publisher of a little news paper called 'The Voice of the People,'
A host of bad guys led by the evil,
Ladd Devine III, an equally pugnacious, little white man whose size belies his ambitions, and
the women of Milagro who range from a pebble-tossing granny to loyal, devoted and equally nutty, delightfully powerful women.
These characters represent the tapestry of Milagros' comedic bravado and cloaked angst with its temperaments and dispositions.
I have read that some people do not like Nichols' depiction of the dominant culture and actually take exception to what has been described as the 'white man's burden.' Such detractors are really missing the point because the story is about a nostalgic look at a culture and way of life that is quickly waning. As a case in point, Onofre Martinez articulates the point quite eloquently (p 150)when someone makes an off handed comment about gringos;
"'Wait a minute!' Onofre Martinez stammered excitedly, emotionally placing his hand on Ray Gusdorf's shoulder, 'This is my neighbor, and he is a gringo, not even a little bit coyote [half-breed:]. But he's been in the valley as long as I remember, and I consider him to be of my people. And that white man over there told us these things about the dam and the conservancy and showed us the maps, I consider him of my people too, even though he is a lawyer, even though he speaks funny Anglo Spanish you can hardly understand. But I believe he at least tries to speak the truth,and a lawyer who does that should get a big gold medal to hang around his neck. I don't consider Nick Rael to be of my people because he works against my interests... So, I don't believe this is a brown against white question. This is a only one kind of people against another kind of people with different ideas. There are brown people and white people on both sides...People are people...The brown people and white people on our side are better people because they are on the correct side, that's all..."While many of the antiheroes in this story happen to be Anglo and the protagonists are mostly Latinos, the story would not change if the protagonists happened to be a group of backwater whites who were facing similar circumstances. Consequently, I don't really understand why someone, anyone would get ruffled about a white author writing about bad white guys. Apparently, Lonesome Dove doesn't evoke the same sort of bristled criticisms and, for that reason, I find the attacks on John Nichols unwarranted.
John Nichols has created a masterpiece, attentively woven with its muted colors of incredulity, tempered fatalism and brilliant splashes of hope.
I sincerely hope his magnum opus is not discounted because he has the temerity to celebrate the true essence of what is unique about being an American; diversity.
Finally, If you like magical realism, this book is perfect for you.
ps: There's nothing wrong with being like Amarante Cordova - although I still consider myself more like Joe Mondragon. And, hey Tony! You are crazier that Pacheco's pig!
Rating: really liked it
2021 reread: Not as good as I remembered -- but still first rate, if long-winded. It hasn't aged well (or my memories of my long-ago first read were too rosy). Dan Porter's review is fair and nicely-done: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Read that first, though I liked it more than he did. Reactions to the novel differ, and have since its first publication. Nicholls captured the flavor of northern New Mexico really well. And the hapless Vista volunteer from New Jersey redeemed himself in the coda! Sweet. Que Viva Snuffy Ledoux!
In place of an actual review, here are some personal memories and background about the area. I first visited Taos in Junior High (I grew up in Oklahoma), and have visited periodically ever since, including living near Taos for about 5 years, and before that, in Santa Fe for another 5. We both love the area and still go back, and I miss northern New Mexico -- especially the food! We even had a nodding acquaintance with the author while living in Taos! Which is quite a literary town. Northern NM has been a big draw for artists and tourists for 150 years or more. I think most of the local people have benefited from the visitors and new residents, but there are still resentments, and it's still a poor area. The major water project planned (central to the novel) was defeated by local opposition: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/cul... (which has a LOT of background info for the book and area. Maybe more than you will want to read?). Hispanic people have a lot more political power in NM now than 50 years ago. The financial gap is smaller now, but still large.
"Chamisaville" in the novel is Taos itself. Milagro or Miracle Valley is a composite of several of the outlying Hispanic villages in the Taos Valley. The large mine mentioned is the Questa Molybdenum Mine, near the town of Questa, 40 minutes north, still a major employer. Midnight Mountain is Taos Mtn, a part of the Sangre de Cristo range. The movie version was filmed in Truchas, still a very small town, an hour's drive south of Taos.
Rating: really liked it
I remember this book more than I do many others, so it must have left an impression
Rating: really liked it
I was really enjoying this book for the first couple hundred pages, especially since I grew up watching the film and so I already had a huge affection for the story and the main characters. However, somewhere around page 300 I couldn't take it anymore. I don't know why everybody who pops into a scene has to have a lengthy backstory. It contributes nothing to my appreciation of a novel when the author digresses for five pages every time a new character, however insignificant, wanders onto the page. In the middle of the book absolutely nothing happens. The story doesn't move forward, the conversations about what to do or not to do about Joe's beanfield become repetitive, and rather than using this time to tell us more about the people we've already met, new people are introduced and given their five-page bios. Then everybody starts to look like a caricature, because they've each been allotted their several traits, their behavior in each situation is 100% anticipatable, and none of them seems imbued with the capacity to
change. I don't find characters who have no progression very interesting, and that's all I found in this book. They work pretty well in a 2 hour movie, but I have less patience for them in a 630-page book. I wish John Nichols and his editors had realized that he had a damn good 200-page book on his hands. I don't understand why so much of the reading public has a high tolerance for authorial blather. But then, I'm a slow reader who enjoys reading slowly, taking my time to absorb the craft of great writing. Or, conversely, I can appreciate a book short on literary craft but well paced and devoted to telling a good yarn. You had a great yarn, Nichols. I'm happy that some moviemakers found it and extracted it from this overwrought and overwritten book.
Rating: really liked it
My friend Cathy and I went to Santa Fe and found that Robert Redford was filming this movie. So we decided to go watch them film. We got to the gate and I lied by saying that we were with the press, but then Cathy had to go and tell the truth. So, we didn't get in to see him. That night we were at a bar in Santa Fe and ran into the crew, and one of their members said that we could come to watch them film the next day. But alas, we were leaving town in the morning. The book and the movie were good, but not great, and this isn't about sour grapes.
Rating: really liked it
I'm always sad when I decide to give up on a book. It feels like euthanasia. But sometimes I have to grit my teeth and put the book down. This was one of those cases.
I wanted to love The Milagro Beanfield War because of its quirkiness, but the sheer number of characters and amount of back story was overwhelming. I appreciate Nichols taking the time to create an entire town full of people, past and present, but he didn't need to include every single one of them in his final draft. At first it was cute. By the time I was closing in on page 100, it was just exhausting.
Rest in peace, people of Milagro.
Rating: really liked it
In a New Mexico valley the power is held by one man and his company. Over the years Ladd Devine’s family has manipulated the indigenous peasant farmers, securing the majority of water rights for his proposed golf course / spa retreat while leaving the original residents with arid land, unsuitable for farming, or even grazing. So he’s been able to buy out the poor farmers securing more and more land and leaving less water for those that remain. Until one day Joe Mondragon decides to cut a break in the wall and divert water onto his late father’s field, so he can plant some beans.
I've had this book on my TBR "radar" for a bajillion years and I don't know why I waited so long to read it. I really liked it a lot! The quirky characters, the message, the humor, the pathos, and the landscape all made this an especially moving book for me. I could not help but think of my grandparents - we always referred to their property as a "dirt farm" - dirt being their most reliable crop. They were on their ranch / farm well into their 80s ... even after my grandfather had two strokes. He just got up and kept caring for the animals, tending the orchards, repairing the truck, doing whatever it took to keep on living.
So thank you, PBT Trim the TBR for finally giving me the "push" I needed to get to this gem of a novel. I can hardly wait to read it again!
If I have any complaint about the book, it’s about this edition’s AFTERWARD, where the author begins with:
Actually, I’ve sort of had it with THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR. and goes on to explain how distressed he is that
this is the only book people seem to remember him for rather all his other works, some of which he believes are superior. But my disappointment with his little tantrum doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book itself.
Rating: really liked it
Great read and funny as heck. Points out that water is the life blood of the west. I think I met Joe Mondragon or his twin. I think I want to visit New Mexico.
Rating: really liked it
"You can't buy bullets with food stamps," says Nick Rael, the store owner of the one store in Milagro, New Mexico, when Amarante Cordova peals off four one-dollar stamps and carefully lays them on the counter. This absurd scene in The Milagro Beanfield War, the first novel in John Nichols' epic New Mexico Triology, serves well enough to illustrate the power of Nichols' voice and the authority of his narrative, but Amarante takes his bullets and shuffles off to stand guard over Joe Mondragon's controversial beanfield with a prehistoric revolver and a bottle of cheap brandy, envisioning an angel who in Nichol's words "Is no shining angel with a golden halo straight from Tiffany's... rather, a half-toothless, one-eyed bum sort of coyote dressed in tattered blue jeans and sandals, and sporting a pair of drab moth-eaten wings..." It is in scenes like this when Nichols exposes the magic underpinnings of Milagro that The Beanfield War is elevated from minor skirmish to massive global conflict... something in line with a Paradise Lost where the devil is a sawed-off unflamboyant man who systematically gathers up the souls of little ranchers and uses them to light his cigars and God is taking a really long siesta while Jesus is getting drunk with his wife and illegally irrigating a field of beans. I would list this as required reading for anyone who enjoys Steinbeck, Marquez, Cervantes, Castaneda, or Marijuana.
Rating: really liked it
Whew! That was a long one! One of those massive, epic-style novels that we used to see so much of in the 1970s and 1980s. I feel like I've been living in the fictional town of Milagro, New Mexico for the last month - the time it has taken me to finish this!
I visited New Mexico last summer and loved everything about it! This author did such a great job with setting that I was immediately transported back through his vivid descriptions. I also loved the quirky, multi-layered characters of the town. Powerful storyline, too - kept it moving.
The only reason I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars is that there were just TOO MANY of those quirky, multi-layered characters! There were about 65 names mentioned and seriously, about 30 that the reader had to really remember because they were part of all the events and plot action. It was totally unnecessary, and the author's editor should have jumped on that right away. Delete, delete, delete.
I suppose the last thing to mention is that it was pretty political. Little farmer guy "good" vs. big corporate guy "bad". I thought there was balance and that it was portrayed fairly, and I didn't think it was too heavy-handed for either side, though I've heard people argue that it was. You read and decide! I thoroughly enjoyed it and would like to see the movie now.
Rating: really liked it
The small New Mexican town of Milagro is a universe of its own.
Its inhabitants are poore, tough, stubborn, and set in their own ways.
There is law and order in Milagro but served in a uniquely Milagro’an way, it is not exactly as you would’ve expected it in any other place.
When Jose Mondragon, for no apparent reason at all, decides to water his field from an irrigation channel that he has no rights to, trouble is on its way. The primary reaction from all sides is - let us wait and see. The local investor and landowner Ladd Devine, suspects a larger plott and sets out to investigate. The local people - since there is no plott, are not worried at all and do nothing, for a time anyway.
Until there comes the time of reckoning….
Now that I've reached the end, I hardly remember that I ever had any trouble getting
into this story. There were too many characters and too much background with too little plott to keep it all interesting for a while. But that suddenly changed and then, at some stage, I stopped being able to put it down instead.
I loved this book and all it’s colorful characters. I loved the ingenuity and stubborn obstinance of those people. I loved their no-nonsense attitude to life, and above all I loved the humor with which Nichols describes it all, creating such a relentlessly accurate picture of people as they would have been, if we could see them for who they really are.
Rating: really liked it
How could illegally irrigating a small field of beans cause such chaos and mayhem? This is an uproariously funny book. I enjoyed the characters mini-stories throughout the book. I was charmed by the nature descriptions. Although this was set in New Mexico, it reminded me so much of the Colorado Rockeies where our family vacationed most of my life.
I just borrowed the VHS tape of this movie from the library. It was directed by Robert Redford. Very Good. A few minor changes from the book, but true to the spirit. Some of the incidents are even more hilarious when you see them.
Rating: really liked it
I enjoyed the sense of humor and the quirky, unforgettable characters. The young job corps guy (or whatever he was) was a real hoot, and I could put my self in the shoes of the people of Milagro, though I doubt if I would have been as polite about it as they were.
A nice twist was that the more the system seemed to defeat Joe Mondragon, the more he seemed to win.
I think I would like to visit northern New Mexico to see if the culture was really as he described it. Not that I doubt John Nichols, but I would like to see for myself.
This is a great read.
