CRAZY FEBRUARY
The setting of Crazy February is the remote mountain village of Chomtik, in southern Mexico, and at the start of the book a young Indian has just murdered his father. The reaction of the villagers to this terrible event is a compassionate one, epitomized in the Spanish word lastima, "pity," and it is this same sense of compassion that illuminates the novel and enables the author to give immediacy and universality to the people who live in Chomtik. In the struggle of the Chomtikeros to find their place in a world that seemingly has no place for them, the reader will recognize himself and everyone who has ever had to struggle with his destiny.