Reviews for Teresa of the New World:

Wow! The magical elements were a total thrill-ride, and what a satisfying ending. After finishing it I had that wonderful sensation I get from a great read—the mysterious feeling of having been somewhere, of dreams having risen up and carried me along on a wild journey.

by K. Keith (Amazon.com)

Teresa of the New World is a fascinating glimpse into the era of Spain's colonial expansion into the New World, which began in 1492 with Christopher Columbus and lasted over three centuries. The story of Teresa—a fictitious illegitimate daughter of Spanish conquistador Cabeza de Vaca and a Capoque woman—begins roughly in 1534, when she is four years old. Her father, de Vaca, is one of four survivors the 1528 expedition commanded by Pánfilo Narvaez; he ends up in what is likely Galveston, Texas, where the Capoque band lived.

Throughout his stay with the tribe Cabeza sires two children, Teresa and her baby sister. He also hones his meager medical knowledge into that of a healer. Teresa is a magical child who communicates with the earth and animals. While Cabeza seems to have affection for his daughter, he is pragmatic. His mission is to explore and document; he takes her on his journey, at her insistence. She will never see her mother or baby sister again.

Cabeza abandons Teresa at the Governor's, leaving her behind because of political conflict. Teresa will never see her father again; however she will read his accounts about the native people he encounters in New Spain (current-day southwestern US and Mexico), and their ability to survive. His words will speak to her because she has heard the stories in the book he writes. She ends up working in the kitchen and loses connection with her magic. She leaves at sixteen, when everyone around her succumbs to measles.

Teresa carries the measles virus, but she does not come down with the sickness. She befriends a warhorse and a shape-shifting Maya boy who also carries the virus. The Plague (another shape-shifter) and the wall of Fear chase and attempt to trick the three of them. Teresa discovers her magic and it is powerful stuff. Parts of the story were reminiscent of fairy tales I heard as a child.

by Judy M. Miller (StoryBook Circle)

Teresa of the New World tells the story of Teresa, the fictional daughter of the real-life Spanish conquistador, Cabeza de Vaca. As his daughter, she travels with him from her home and family in coastal Texas to the outposts of New Spain. There, her father leaves her behind, unwilling to go home to his Spanish family with a half Native American daughter. When plague strikes the mission, Teresa has to rediscover her connection to the earth, all the while pursued by Plague himself.

Sharman Apt Russell’s novel is a combination of straightforward storytelling—a twelve year old could read this easily—and deep concepts. Teresa talks with (not to) the earth and its inhabitants. She and the horse she finds abandoned by his master have a number of long discussions. The earth is always pleased to hear from her and asks for stories and secrets. One strength of Teresa is that the earth’s voice is not a human voice; the earth may say “I like watching people. I like watching what you do.” At the same time, the earth’s response to the prospect of people dying is “They will come back to me…I will still love them.” Earth is loving, but not human.

Plague, too, is not an abstract concept; he is a living being who wants to spread. And he, too has his own, alien point of view, one that borrows of human views at times but is essentially that of a voracious trickster.

Mixed in with this accounts of talking with the earth and evading plague personified is a sober historical account: There really was a Cabeza de Vaca. He really was shipwrecked and spent years traveling back toward Spanish lands. He really was seen as a healer, and he did advocate for better treatment of the Native Americans. The Spanish really did bring plague and set in motion what the book’s cover describes as “a time of apocalypse.”

At times, the two sides, the historical realism and the magical realism, are not as well-balanced as they might be: Teresa’s early contact with the earth is interrupted by a rather long and more historically-oriented time at the Spanish mission during which she thinks of her father but not of her old ties to the life around her. It is only after the plague that the conversations with the earth resume, so that the book is divided into three segments with the middle holding a different flavor than the first and last. This is only a small unevenness, however, in an otherwise well-told tale.

Teresa is a powerful protagonist who has to grow up quickly, from a child, to a kitchen servant, to a mother-figure and protector of others. Unlike many such tales, hers is a largely peaceful process: She is not a warrior-princess out to drive away the Spanish, she is a healer learning how to use those powers to defeat Plague and, ultimately, other ills. In Teresa, recovering from illness and abandonment means learning how to talk with the earth again, how to live in it

There are several lyrical passages about life on and under the earth’s surface and more of the plants and animals around making this a good book to give to a nature-loving, daydreaming child. Adults, too, are likely to find that it unfolds unexpectedly into strange depths.

by FangirlNation