Fiction: Francisco Goldman's energetic and ambitious third novel begins in the 1870s in a central American country, not unlike Guatemala, and follows the fate of its characters through turbulent decades that include revolution and dictatorship, shifting patterns of emigration (from central America to New York) and immigration (from Europe), the corruption of indigenous "Indio" society, great technological changes in industry and agriculture, and gentler changes in the pace of small-town life.
Goldman is an American, and writes in English, though he is also bilingual in Spanish, and makes ingenious use of Spanish phrases and speech mannerisms.
His novel intermingles fact and fiction, in a manner beloved of Latin American writers, with a version of the historical figure, José Martí (1853-1895), writer and revolutionary martyr, being one of the central characters.
The Divine Husband opens with a superb 73-page description of the daily life of the lively, intelligent 13-year-old, María de la Nieves Moran, who has taken the veil in an attempt to prevent her childhood companion, Paquita Aparicio, from marrying a suitor 30 years her senior, whom they call El Anticristo.
María speaks English with a Bronx accent, and her antecedents are pure García Márquez: pursuing a rumour of a golden-haired little girl living deep in the jungle, Paquita's father tracks her down, and discovers her smoking a cigar, and playing with an unknown object that we recognise as a balloon.
Her Yankee father, Timothy Moran, had intended to start a coffee farm, but died after being kicked by a mule, leaving his wife and child stranded.
Paquita's father brings them back to town to live with his family.
When María is suddenly thrown into the world by El Anticristo's abolition of convents, the story fractures into many pieces, and never really recovers momentum.
There is a dizzying play of flashback and flash-forward, as minor characters are given their moment in the spotlight.
The most enjoyable aspect is the apparently compulsive and often fascinating background detail, including disquisitions on cochineal farming, the manufacture of condoms, and the origins of Pepe, the diminutive for José (from the initials Pater Putativus, indicating Joseph's relationship to Christ).
The novel is carefully crafted, with deliberate echoes of Martí's writings, and a series of recurring motifs, most importantly, the balloon.
The pace never flags, but all too often the reader, dizzy from rushing between two Americas and several different decades, wishes it would.
Unfortunately, the richness of the background detail is not matched by the quality of the main story, which is driven more by wild coincidence than by character.
Alannah Hopkin is a writer and critic
The Divine Husband by Francisco Goldman Atlantic Books, 465pp. £15.99