Jim Ashworth reviews The Mango Orchard
by Robin Bayley and finds that it draws an interesting parallel with his own family history.
Most of us here at Journey Latin America have, at some point in our life, set out for Latin America with little more than a backpack, an out-of-date guidebook and a vague sense of what lies ahead in the hope of finding out a little more, not just of this magnificent land, but of ourselves. In Robin Bayley’s extraordinary story,
The Mango Orchard, he discovers these things and a whole lot more.
The Mango Orchard is a heady mix of history, family secrets and fantastic travellers’ tales, filled with emotion and set to the inspiring backdrop of Mexican culture.
I don’t want to give anything away, as the book offers up some wonderful twists and turns as a young Robin follows the footsteps of his great-grandfather’s journey to the new world to work at a cotton mill in the west of a hostile Mexico. Arthur Greenhalgh had left Lancashire at the turn of the 19th century to start a new life and, like Robin almost 100 years after him, with little clue as to what he was letting himself in for.
Robin’s journey takes in the US, Guatemala and a round-about route via Colombia, eventually arriving in Mexico to search for clues to his relative’s life in this alien world. The book links tales of Mexico recounted when the author was a child with his own adventures through Latin America, and offers history, emotion and comedy in equal measure. Above all, the whole story is set off by the wonderful backdrop of a wild Latin American landscape. Bayley conjures up superb images of beautiful colonial Antigua, the wild coast of Colombia and above all vast swathes of diverse Mexican countryside. Filled with the friendly and unusual people he meets along the way, it’s a romp that had me longing to return to these areas myself.
In fact, my own grandfather lived in the oil rich town of Tampico, on Mexico’s eastern coast, when he was a young man, and
The Mango Orchard has made me want to retrace his steps and see what he might have left behind... But whether you have been to Mexico or not
The Mango Orchard is a great read that will have you turning the pages to find out what happens next. And indeed you might want to read it quickly, as there are already rumours of a film in the offing!