Stealing Benefacio's Roses

by Martin Prechtel

Book Overview

Following the acclaimed Secrets of The Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart , this is an expansive, lyrical novel in the tradition of indigenous oral storytelling. Based on the author's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556435878
• ISBN13: 9781556435874
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Metaphor For Our Time

Martin Prechtel is perhaps the most capable of sacred story telling of today's authors. His respect for the power of language is immense and this book where he is retelling an ancient Mayan myth as it parallels his own experience is stunning in its capacity to illuminate todays world in all its contrasts. It is the third in an autobiographical trilogy. However, if you have not yet read the first two, don't worry, it stands completely on its own. This book was previously released under the title "The Toe Bone and the Tooth".

Profound and touching

You wouldn't think it possible to say "this is Martin Prechtel's best book yet" because they are all so exceptional. If you are interested in current Mayan culture, indigenous peoples, love, life, Central American politics... this book is a tour de force. Martin Prechtel is one of the most truly amazing, talented, gifted, wise, insightful people you might ever hope to meet. On top of this, he is an extraordinarily gifted writer. Buy the book. Buy them all.

The One You Keep

TV, more than any other medium, has become America's storyteller. Sometimes that's not so bad; other times it presents shallow and false values to impressionable minds. When I'm hungry for ultimate truths, I've often found it best to go to other cultures and borrow their stories. One of the very, very best is "Stealing Benefacio's Roses." Within this story you will find your heart and be surprised at how strong and lovely it is. You will find your soul and come to know your true self. It's a story that works on the surface level of "Once upon a time . . ." yet also touches the deeper realms of mythology, spirituality, psychology, history and the many varieties of love. The writing is superb. Here's a quote: "Onto the floor I dropped to sleep, drifting on the tossing sea of my aching heart in a little canoe of Gustavo's friendship, into dreams filled with the unkillable perfume of Benefacio's roses." To understand and savor the last five words, buy the book and enjoy the revelations. This is the one you will keep to reread over time.

The Great Story

"In much wisdom is much grief" says the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, "and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow." There is much wisdom, grief, knowledge, sorrow, and finally joy in Martin Prechtel's new book. You don't have to read his previous three, *Secrets of the Talking Jaguar,* *Long Life, Honey in the Heart,* and *The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun* to understand and appreciate the message of *The Toe Bone and the Tooth* - but it helps.This is a story about keeping the Great Story alive - "An Ancient Mayan Story Relived in Modern Times: Leaving Home to Come Home."It starts out with Martin's return to Guatamala in 1992 after many years in exile from his adopted country, where his village of Santiago Atitlan had been destroyed and 1800 of his friends and villagers slaughtered by American-backed death squads in the 1980s. He was picked up at the airport by three teenage boys (who had been small children when the devastation took place) and smuggled back to the village under a truckload of Mayan squashes. Along the way, the boys were eager to hear the story of the Toe Bone and Tooth that had been outlawed (as well as their language) by the various and many invaders of their country. Landmarks of the Story were everywhere (much as Australian Dreamtime stories are dependent on the land for the telling).Martin was welcomed in Santiago Atitlan as the Shaman and healer that he was for many years. He had had a Mayan wife and three sons there (one son died) and his little family had barely escaped with their lives.The ancient story of the Toe Bone and Tooth is inserted here - the Story of a mortal, Raggedy Boy, who fell in love with the Water Goddess, the story of her death after bearing him two corn children and being forgotten when her husband returned to the mortal world. When he did remember her through dreams, he had to re-member her, gathering her bones with the help of Coyote (who had the toe bone and tooth) and descending into the underworld to retrieve her heart. He was helped by an old magical couple. Re-membered, she became an ordinary woman and he became an ordinary man, and from them, all humans are descended.The next few chapters chronicle the story of Martin's first arrival in Santiago Atitlan - how he'd been lost in a blizzard in his American homeland of Northern New Mexico in his youth, and how he was saved by a mare named Morningstar and an old Spanish lady who cured him of an almost fatal fever with bear grease and herbs. During his convalescence, he had 11 dreams of Santiago Atitlan and Nicolas Chiviliu Tacaxoy, who was to become his teacher, friend and mentor and who had called him through dreams for three years before he finally arrived in the village. Says Prechtel, "Though I was blond and born far away, we were the old and young generation of throwbacks from other times and layers of existence in which a humble dynasty of people in service to the remembrance of the Dismembered Goddess was continued from centur

A suggestion

It might help readers to know that this book and "The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun" are written to be read aloud. When you do this the prose has a rhythm that is part of the meaning of the book.