Just finished the Lacuna, by Barbara Kingslover.
Excellent and highly recommended.
Brief of the storyline:
Boy (Sheppard) born in US in 1916 of an American father and Mexican mother. Mother and father divorce when boy young, mother takes boy to Mexico. The place where they land is on the coast and nearby is a cave which is visible only at low tide. Sheppard discovers the cave (lacuna) is a tube to an outlet on the other side which is an whole different world.
Sheppard grows and comes to live at the home of Diego Rivera from a chance meeting of Frida Kahlo who lived with him. Sheppard becomes a cook there, goes to live with Frida at her place, and eventually with "Lev" Trotsky - yes, that Trotsky.
Years pass, Frida asks Sheppard to escort some of her paintings to the US and he ends up staying, living in North Carolina. He has all along kept a running diary since childhood and begins to write novels about Mexican early history. He becomes a best seller.
Cut to the Dies UnAmarican Activities committee and all that follows it, he is accused of being a Communist and the story then heads toward its ending, which I will let you discover on your own.
Excellent writing, done in the conceit of a retelling of the journals, with letters, by Sheppard's stenographer from N. Carolina.
I read it on Kindle so not sure how many pages, but seemed a moderate length.
