Suffering will be second nature for Salvador by the end of Luisa Maria Celis' debut historical novel, Arrows.

The missionary will be bashed about in a deadly storm, rescued from falling overboard, taken seriously ill, twice skewered by arrows, attacked by a horde of hungry red ants, stabbed in the chest, punched, battered and finally tortured by the folks at the Spanish Inquisition. In between injuries and mishaps, he engages in self-flagellation.

And that list of woes doesn't include his broken heart. It's Spain's Golden Age in the mid 16th-century and the evangelist has left his monastery in Spain to join an expedition sent to re-conquer territory in the Caracas valley. Two previously vanquished expeditions failed to take revenge on the Carib leader, Guacaipuro, who left the original Spanish settlement in ashes ten years earlier.

Despite the physical hardships-or possibly because of them-our embedded priest/protagonist is initially eager to give spiritual support to his fellow Spaniards and convert the savages, resisting temptations of the flesh and denying himself even such a small comfort as sandals. Salvador has to be persuaded to accept a ride on a donkey.

Burdened by high-minded and puritanical intentions, like Don Quixote, the muddling and meddling priest eventually perceives disillusioning truth. During his prolonged epiphany of reason over a two-year period, he comprehends that his Catholic faith is next-to-meaningless and his Spanish comrades are essentially killers after gold.

Worse, Salvador discovers he is helpless to change the fate of the so-called New World. Openly opposed to genocide, he tries to intervene on behalf of the Indians long before he witnesses the rape of his love interest, Apacuana-halfway through the novel-by a Spanish colleague.

When Salvador tries to gain the trust of the Indians in Guacaipuro's village, he is harm's way. His faithful Mestizo translator Tamanoa is murdered and chopped into pieces; and the Carib chieftain who protects him is blasted away by his Spanish comrades. And that's NOT giving away the most important part of the story.

There is a surprise ending-involving his brother Bartolomé, the ship captain who brought him to South America on his 400-ton carrack, Isabella-but the reader is most likely to remember Salvador's jungle love with Apacuana, the late-emerging heroine who saves his skin, leads him beyond temptation, and ultimately skewers his selfishness.

"The Spanish kill with the sword,"; she says. "And the Spanish kill with the word.";

Yes, Salvador is a serious liability in the name of God. But it's Salvador's relationship with the 'wild Aphrodite' Apacuana ["Apa-kwana";] that leads to the heart of the matter. Far from being your classic "princess"; or conveniently-placed nymphet, Apacuana reveals the absurdity of preaching self-sacrifice to native women. Like the men around him, Salvador values honour above fidelity.

"I saw my parents die when those first Spaniards came and settled in the place your people live now,"; she says. "Men go to war without caring how much pain they leave in a woman's heart. We could have retreated into the mountains, but, no; men have to fight. And they die, killing with them the women who loved them. Their honour. That's all men care about.";

Luisa Maria Celis read 90 books over nine years to make Arrows, the first volume of a projected trilogy. Specifically, Arrows follows the chronicles of José de Oviedo y Baáos (1671-1738), a colonial historian, who published the History of the Conquest and Population of the Province of Venezuela in 1723.

Along the way she also had to translate her work from Spanish into English. When she understood her manuscript was too long, she took the advice of her editor and separated the work into two novels.

In the second volume, we'll learn how the extroverted Bartolomé loses his sweetheart Paloma, marries her sister and then discovers he has a ten-year old son with Paloma.

Meanwhile, there's room for quibbles: The Caribs are touted as formidable foes, but later Salvador argues the Caribs don't have a ghost of a chance against the horses and technology of the conquistadors.

As well, Salvador proves himself remarkably gifted as a linguist, somehow gaining fluency in a new language after only a few months in Apacuana's village.

When you do the copious amount of research that this author has sweated over, it's easy to get overly caught up in the facts, but she manages to balance fact with fiction and achieve readability and credibility.

The religious side of Salvador is highly believable and the battle descriptions are vivid. Arrows is a riveting and informative adventure romance-perhaps ideal for a film-and not without philosophical depth.

"The hardest thing about writing the book was the price I paid for trying to tell the story with complete honesty,"; she says. "This book changed me. I started as a devout Catholic and ended up a free-thinker.";

Good for this plucky little publisher for taking chances on new Canadian writers who operate beyond the Anglophonic mainstream.

978-0-9810735-2-1

-- review by Cherie Thiessen
[BCBW 2009] "Spanish"