Emilia Sauri, daughter of a Spanish mother and a Mayan father, is torn between her dreams of becoming a doctor, a calling that leads to Antonio Zavalza, a physician and man of peace, and her love for her childhood sweetheart, Daniel Cuenca, who leaves home to take part in the Mexican Revolution. When young Emilia Sauri is born in turn-of-the-century Puebla, Mexico, her father expects great things for this child who will "live her entire life in a new century." Emilia grows up to be an independent woman, a doctor in a time and place when female physicians were few and far between, but history has a habit of sidetracking even the most regulated lives; the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1911 throws the nation into chaos and Emilia's future into uncertainty. Angeles Mastretta's second novel, Lovesick , follows the fortunes of Emilia and of Mexico as both are torn by the ravages of war. For Mexico, a dictator's triumphant overthrow slips rapidly into endless bloody revolution; for Emilia, her peaceful life as a healer is disrupted by her conflicting feelings for her lover, a fellow doctor, and Daniel Cuenca, a childhood friend-turned-revolutionary. In real life, love and war seldom end neatly. So it is with Lovesick , a novel that refuses to give either its characters or readers easy solutions to complex problems. Emilia's choice between the meaningful existence she shares with her lover and the exhilaration she experiences with Daniel is at the heart of this book, yet Angeles Mastretta's novel doesn't wear that heart on its sleeve; like life, Lovesick leaves some questions unanswered. YA. Born in 1893 in southern Mexico into a household longing for a child, Emilia Sauri begins her remarkable life of love and strife, miracles and losses just as her Aunt Milagros has prophesied. Her father, a pharmacist involved in politics, and her mother, an herbalist and the perfect nonpolitical counterpoint for her husband, provide a near-perfect childhood for Emilia. When she is older, she falls in love with a young man who is seduced by wanderlust and the excitement of politically induced wars. Emilia waits for Daniel to return, knowing all the while that he will leave her again. She gradually falls in love with Antonio Zavalza, a physician. She spends years in turmoil as she battles the inner war of loving two men. Eventually, she marries Zavalza, but also insures that she will always have Daniel. Mastretta parallels the years of political wars with the turmoil of Emilia's life. Much of the plot deals with the convolutions of political uprisings and revolution; they fit into the story as naturally as the vivid descriptions of the heat, the beauty of the land, and the temperament of the people. Readers who liked Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (HarperCollins, 1970) or Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits (Knopf, 1985) will find similar themes to enjoy here.?Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Mastretta's new work (following Mexican Bolero, Viking, 1990) is the seductively romantic tale of Emilia Sauri, who declares herself a bigamist for loving two men. Local physician Antonio Zavalza, a kind and patient man with unlimited love for Emilia, becomes her husband and the father of her children. Daniel Cuenca, a fighter in the Mexican Revolution whom Emilia has known since childhood, becomes her lover and partner in a very intense, tempestuous, and volcanic relationship. Readers who enjoyed Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera will find this love story enchanting and perhaps contagious.?Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., Ohio Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Mastretta, a best-selling novelist in her native Mexico and in Europe, makes her North American debut with this charming romance set during the fervor and bloodshed of the Mexican Revolution. It all begins with the deep and abiding sensual love between Diego and Josefa, a couple who enjoys many pleasurable years alone together before the birth of their daughter, Emilia. Intrepid, clever, and beautiful, Emilia inherits her pharmacologist father's fascination with the healing power of plants but is determined to connect her gift for traditional remedies with knowledge of modern medicine, an unusual ambition for a woman of her place and time. Close as she is to her adoring father, however, she resists his devotion to radical politics until she discovers that her beloved aunt, Milagros, is also dedicated to the cause, as is Daniel, her childhood playmate and, as they swirl into precocious puberty, ardent lover. For Daniel, the revolution comes first, so he can only offer Emilia isolated nights of wild passion amid weeks of fear and worry. So Emilia teaches herself to live with another, the good doctor Antonio, a man centered and mature enough to accept her divided heart and work with her as an eq