The Silver Cloud Cafe: 8

After a rather disjointed start, Vea's second novel (after La Maravilla) becomes an enchanting tale of faith and justice that deftly draws upon religion, superstition and poetry to reveal the brutal yet vibrant lives of an extended family of immigrants. With threads that reach back in time to the Mexican Revolution, over the Pacific to the Philippines and across the U.S., the kaleidoscopic narrative renders a colorful panorama of cultures depicted through a motley cast of characters. A gay Filipino, a Mexican stripper, a black former prizefighter, a mad Bulgarian cab driver, an assassin, transvestites, migrant workers and the San Francisco police collide with angels, saints, martyrs, even Cesar Chavez and the ghost of a Greek poet. The settings are California's migrant worker camps of the late 1950s and San Francisco's present-day Mission District. When San Francisco lawyer Zeferino Del Campo is appointed to represent a hunchbacked midget accused of a vicious murder, he must first unravel his memories of a killing he witnessed as a child in a migrant worker camp. At the center of his search is Raphael's Silver Cloud Cafe, a mystical dancehall bar that has become a haven for the dispossessed. Though the narrative is disjointed at times and Vea occasionally succumbs to heavy moralizing against American jingoism and free market-worship, his instinct for storytelling keeps us immersed in this zesty, poetic celebration of America's immigrant cultures. (Oct.)