Did Harrison walk these grounds?

Harrison William Shepherd, the lead character of Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel The Lacuna figured prominently into the week long visit of my parents in Mexico City. In the novel, Harrison’s journal entries detail his work with Diego Rivera, mixing plaster for the Mexican muralist, eventually becoming a cook for the Diego and Frida household in Coyoacán. Intimate letters reveal the lifelong friendship between Harrison and Frida Kahlo, which also leads him into the employ of Leon Trotsky, who is killed in 1940 after several assassination attempts

Having thoroughly enjoyed the novel, my parents and I retraced his steps with Diego, Frida and Trotsky. We spotted the historical figures in Diego’s National Palace mural and those in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. We walked the Alameda, toured Diego’s studio in San Angel and soaked in the ambiance of Coyoacán. The marked contrast of vibrancy and energy of Frida’s Blue House and the Trotsky House five or six blocks apart gave way to musing on the political turmoil of the 40s and the persecution of Stalin oceans and countries away.

In faithfulness to the pursuit of all things Frida and Diego, we visited the Museum of Modern Art in Chapultepec Park which is home to the famous Las Dos Fridas, along with others of Rivera, Orozco and Siquieros, a conspirator in a failed assassination attempt of Trotsky. The Secretary of Education building, home to hundreds of Diego’s murals that praise the campesino (farmer) and trabajador (worker) of Mexico, and the fateful location where Frida first met Diego, completed our tour.