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1. The story begins with the main characters being thrust into the oncoming war. What are your first impressions of Ximena and John Riley?

2. In chapter 6, John compares Ireland and Mexico, saying, “’Tis Mexico’s bad luck to have the United States as its neighbor . . . Just as ’twas our bad luck to have England loomin’ across the Irish Sea.” Discuss why the Irish deserters feel such a kinship with the Mexican citizens. See how many examples you can find throughout the book.

3. The deaths of Joaquín and Sullivan change the course of Ximena and John’s lives. Compare and constrast the ways Ximena and John entered. Could they have made different choices?

4. Grande references church bells throughout the novel. What significance do the church and religion play in the story? Why do you think this writing device was used?

5. Grande uses vivid imagery to bring the experiences of Ximena and John to the reader. What imagery was most striking? What other techniques does the author use to involve the reader in the setting and events?

6. After receiving the news that his wife has passed away, John wonders what right he has now to happiness. In chapter 30, he decides he must abandon his love for Ximena to atone for the sins against his wife. Do you agree with John’s decision to leave Ximena? Do you think he had another choice?

7. Nana Hortencia tells Ximena in chapter 12 that “it is true that the path God has chosen for you is one full of thorns.” As Ximena’s spiritual guide and teacher, Nana Hortencia passes down to all her knowledge of traditional healing and spiritual beliefs. How do Nana Hortencia’s teachings help Ximena survive the path before her?

8. Why is it important for Ximena to have dreamed of both Joaquín’s death and the hangings of the St. Patrick’s Battalion?

9. As a book focused on war, loss is a prominent theme throughout. Which character’s death felt the most consequential to Ximena, John, and the story as a whole? Why?

10. Maloney’s punishment at the beginning of the story foreshadows Riley’s punishment when the Saint Patrick’s Battalion is captured by the Yankee army. Discuss other examples of foreshadowing in the book.

11. The story is divided into three parts. Discuss the importance of the titles of each part and how they describe the stages of the war as experienced by Ximena and John.

12. Even though they will “always carry battle scars within them,” John and Ximena are able to start anew in Ireland. What do you think life will be like for them in Ireland?

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John Riley, an Irish immigrant soldier recruited in the American army during the Mexican-American War faces anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic bigotry from his fellow servicemen and defects to... Read all John Riley, an Irish immigrant soldier recruited in the American army during the Mexican-American War faces anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic bigotry from his fellow servicemen and defects to the Mexican army. John Riley, an Irish immigrant soldier recruited in the American army during the Mexican-American War faces anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic bigotry from his fellow servicemen and defects to the Mexican army.

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By what name was One Man's Hero (1999) officially released in Canada in English?

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One Man's Hero: Directed by Lance Hool. With Tom Berenger, Joaquim de Almeida, Daniela Romo, Mark Moses. John Riley, an Irish immigrant soldier recruited in the American army during the Mexican-American War faces anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic bigotry from his fellow servicemen and defects to the Mexican army.

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"We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God."

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"We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God."

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"Mexico surrendered. There were calls among Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 1848, just took half. The Texas boundary was set at the Rio Grande; New Mexico and California were ceded. The United States paid Mexico $15 million, which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude that 'we take nothing by conquest.... Thank God.'"

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"At first there seemed to be enthusiasm in the army, fired by pay and patriotism. Martial spirit was high in New York, where the legislature authorized the governor to call fifty thousand volunteers. Placards read "Mexico or Death." There was a mass meeting of twenty thousand people in Philadelphia. Three thousand volunteered in Ohio.

This initial spirit soon wore off...

...As the soldiers moved up the Rio Grande to Camargo, the heat became unbearable, the water impure, and sickness grew-diarrhea, dysentery, and other maladies-until a thousand were dead. At first the dead were buried to the sounds of the "Dead March" played by a military hand. Then the number of dead was too great, and formal military funerals ceased...

...Desertion grew. In March 1847 the army reported over a thousand deserters. The total number of deserters during the war was 9,207: 5,331 regulars, 3,876 volunteers. Those who did not desert became harder and harder to manage. General Gushing referred to sixty-five such men in the 1st Regiment of the Massachusetts Infantry as 'incorrigibly mutinous and insubordinate.'

The glory of the victory was for the President and the generals, not the deserters, the dead, the wounded...John Calhoun of South Carolina said in Congress that 20 percent of the troops had died of battle or sickness. The Massachusetts Volunteers had started with 630 men. They came home with three hundred dead, mostly from disease, and at the reception dinner on their return their commander, General Gushing, was hissed by his men. The Cambridge Chronicle wrote: 'Charges of the most serious nature against one and all of these military officials drop daily from the lips of the volunteers.'

As the veterans returned home, speculators immediately showed up to buy the land warrants given by the government. Many of the soldiers, desperate for money, sold their 160 acres for less than $50. The New York Commercial Advertiser said in June 1847: 'It is a well-known fact that immense fortunes were made out of the poor soldiers who shed their blood in the revolutionary war by speculators who preyed upon their distresses. A similar system of depredation was practised upon the soldiers of the last war.'"

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"Where was popular opinion? It is hard to say. After the first rush, enlistments began to dwindle. The 1846 elections showed much anti-Polk sentiment, but who could tell how much of this was due to the war?...There were no surveys of public opinion at that time. As for voting, a majority of the people did not vote at all-and how did these nonvoters feel about the war?

Historians of the Mexican war have talked easily about 'the people' and 'public opinion'... evidence, however, is not from 'the people' but from the newspapers, claiming to be the voice of the people. The New York Herald wrote in August 1845: 'The multitude cry aloud for war.' And the New York Journal of Commerce, half-playfully, half-seriously, wrote: 'Let us go to war. The world has become stale and insipid, the ships ought to be all captured, and the cities battered down, and the world burned up, so that we can start again. There would be fun in that. Some interest,-something to talk about.' The New York Morning News said 'young and ardent spirits that throng the cities . . . want but a direction to their restless energies, and their attention is already fixed on Mexico.'"

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"In the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to his Secretary of the Navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition of California. His order to General Taylor to move troops to the Rio Grande was a challenge to the Mexicans. It was not at all clear that the Rio Grande was the southern boundary of Texas, although Texas had forced the defeated Mexican general Santa Anna to say so when he was a prisoner. The traditional border between Texas and Mexico had been the Nueces River, about 150 miles to the north, and both Mexico and the United States had recognized that as the border. However, Polk, encouraging the Texans to accept annexation, had assured them he would uphold their claims to the Rio Grande."

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"The Irish Potato Famine, also known as the Great Hunger, began in 1845 when a fungus-like organism called Phytophthora infestans (or P. infestans) spread rapidly throughout Ireland. The infestation ruined up to one-half of the potato crop that year, and about three-quarters of the crop over the next seven years. Because the tenant farmers of Ireland—then ruled as a colony of Great Britain—relied heavily on the potato as a source of food, the infestation had a catastrophic impact on Ireland and its population. Before it ended in 1852, the Potato Famine resulted in the death of roughly one million Irish from starvation and related causes, with at least another million forced to leave their homeland as refugees."

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Ireland in the 1800s

With the ratification of the Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, Ireland was effectively governed as a colony of Great Britain (until the Irish War of Independence ended in 1921). Together, the combined nations were known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

As such, the British government appointed Ireland's executive heads of state, known respectively as the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary of Ireland, although residents of the Emerald Isle could elect representation to the British Parliament in London.

In all, Ireland sent 105 representatives to the House of Commons-the lower house of Parliament-and 28 "peers" (titled landowners) to the House of Lords, or the upper house.

Still, it's important to note that the bulk of these elected representatives were landowners of British origin and/or their sons. In addition, any Irish who practiced Catholicism-the majority of Ireland's native population-were initially prohibited from owning or leasing land, voting or holding elected office under the so-called Penal Laws.

Although the Penal Laws were largely repealed by 1829, their impact on Ireland's society and governance was still being felt at the time of the Potato Famine's onset. English and Anglo-Irish families owned most of the land, and most Irish Catholics were relegated to work as tenant farmers forced to pay rent to the landowners.

Ironically, less than 100 years before to the Famine's onset, the potato was introduced to Ireland by the landed gentry. However, despite the fact only one variety of the potato was grown in the country (the so-called "Irish Lumper"), it soon became a staple food of the poor, particularly during cold winter months.

Great Hunger Begins

When the crops began to fail in 1845, as a result of P. infestans infection, Irish leaders in Dublin petitioned Queen Victoria and Parliament to act-and, initially, they did, repealing the so-called " Corn Laws " and their tariffs on grain, which made food such as corn and bread prohibitively expensive.

Still, these changes failed to offset the growing problem of the potato blight. With many tenant farmers unable to produce sufficient food for their own consumption, and the costs of other supplies rising, thousands died from starvation, and hundreds of thousands more from disease caused by malnutrition.

Complicating matters further, historians have since concluded that Ireland continued to export large quantities of food, primarily to Great Britain, during the blight. In cases such as livestock and butter, research suggests that exports from Ireland may have actually increased during the Potato Famine.

In 1847 alone, records indicate that commodities such as peas, beans, rabbits, fish and honey continued to be exported from Ireland, even as the Great Hunger ravaged the countryside.

The potato crops didn't fully recover until 1852. By then, the damage was done. Although estimates vary, it is believed as many as 1 million Irish men, women and children perished during the Famine, and another 1 to 2 million emigrated from the island to escape poverty and starvation, with many landing in various cities throughout North America and Great Britain.

Legacy of the Potato Famine

With a population significant reduced by 2 to 3 million, and increased food imports after 1850, the Irish Potato Famine eventually ended around 1852. But for those who remained behind in a decimated Ireland, a renewed appreciation was ignited for Irish independence from British rule.

The exact role of the British government in the Potato Famine and its aftermath-whether it ignored the plight of Ireland's poor out of malice, or if their collective inaction and inadequate response could be attributed to incompetence-is still being debated.

However, the significance of the Potato Famine (in the Irish language, An Gorta Mor, or "the Great Hunger") in Irish history, and its contribution to the Irish diaspora of the 19th and 20th centuries, is beyond doubt.

Tony Blair, during his time as British Prime Minister, issued a statement in 1997 offering a formal apology to Ireland for the U.K. government's handling of the crisis at the time.

Irish Hunger Memorials

In recent years, cities to which the Irish ultimately emigrated during and in the decades after the event have offered various commemorations to the lives lost. Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Phoenix in the United States, and Montreal and Toronto in Canada, have erected Irish hunger memorials, as have various cities in Ireland, Australia and Great Britain.

In addition, Glasgow Celtic FC, a soccer team based in Scotland that was founded by Irish immigrants, many of whom were brought to the country as a result of the effects of the Potato Famine, has included a commemorative patch on its uniform-most recently on September 30, 2017-to honor the victims of the Great Hunger.

A Great Hunger Museum was established at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut as a resource for those seeking information on the Potato Famine and its impact, as well as for researchers hoping to explore the event and its aftermath.

Sources

"The Great Hunger: What was the Irish potato famine? How was Queen Victoria involved, how many people died and when did it happen?" TheSun.co.uk.
"Ireland's Representation in Parliament." North American Review (via JSTOR).
"Exports in Famine Times." Ireland's Great Hunger Museum.
"The Irish Famine." BBC.
"Blair issues apology for Irish Potato Famine." The Independent.
"Irish Famine Memorials." IrishFamineMemorials.com.
"Celtic to wear Irish Famine symbol on their Hoops to commemorate the Great Hunger." Irish Post.
"Mournful, Angry Views of Ireland's Famine: A Review of Ireland's Great Hunger Museum, in Hamden." New York Times.

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Irish Potato Famine: Date, Cause & Great Hunger - HISTORY

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The Irish Potato Famine was caused by a potato disease in Ireland in the mid-1800s. The "Great Hunger" killed about 1 million people, forcing another million to emigrate.

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Reyna Grande On Her New Novel
A Ballad of Love and Glory

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Reyna Grande On Her New Novel A BALLAD OF LOVE AND GLORY

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Reyna Grande was nine years old when she left behind her native Mexico as an undocumented immigrant to join her parents in Los Angeles. Grande chronicles her arduous journey-and her ultimate path to becoming the first college graduate in her family-in her celebrated 2012 memoir, The Distance Between Us. The book is the second selection of the California Book Club, which Grande will join as a guest on November 19 for a virtual discussion with host John Freeman.

The particulars of Grande's story-how she was raised by an abusive grandmother in the town of Iguala, how she didn't like spaghetti because it reminded her of tapeworms-are her own. Yet her dispassionate account humanizes the untold number of other immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America who have endured much the same hardship.

"The narrative of Latin America poverty and the 'broken beauty' of places like Iguala is buried deep in the psyche of Los Angeles and other U.S. cities," Héctor Tobar wrote in his of the book for the Los Angeles Times. "Our recent history has been shaped by Latino immigration. We live amid a million unknown tales of family longing, loss, ambition and dysfunction."

For generations, immigrant parents and their children have lived through the trauma of being separated. Grande came to the United States-El Otro Lado-in the 1980s. Her father had left for the U.S. when she was two, and her mother joined him two years later. In recent years, however, another form of separation, one enforced by the U.S. government, has had a far more devastating impact on many families.

In a 2015 announcing his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems... They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

That inflammatory message set the tone for the immigration policy that Trump adopted after he was elected in 2016. Under the policy, thousands of migrant children were separated from their parents after families were held for crossing the border illegally. Children were detained in camps and cages. In 2019, at least seven children died while in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Despite the Trump administration's reversal of its "zero tolerance" policy in 2018, it was revealed earlier this month that the parents of 545 children who were separated from their families still cannot be found.

Trump's talk of "an invasion of our country"-coupled with his repeated promise to build a border wall to keep out migrants-is a reflection of a nation that has become less welcoming to immigrants. Ronald Reagan, often invoked as a paragon of conservative values, signed an immigration reform bill into law in 1986; it offered amnesty to immigrants who had entered the U.S. before 1982. In a 1984 presidential debate with Walter Mondale, Reagan said, "I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally."

In coming to California, Mexicans are coming to a land that was, in fact, theirs before the United States declared war on our neighbor to the south in 1846. The Mexican-American War, also known in Mexico as the intervención estadounidense en México (U.S. intervention in Mexico), resulted in the U.S. acquisition of a vast area of Mexican territory: Alta California, whose name is the inspiration for the . As Grande's own story suggests, the distance between us, as Americans and Mexicans, is not so great after all.

To join the California Book Club for free, you can register here:

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The Roots of Reyna Grande's Immigration Story

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Reyna Grande was nine years old when she left behind her native Mexico as an undocumented immigrant to join her parents in Los Angeles. Grande chronicles her arduous journey-and her ultimate path to becoming the first college graduate in her family-in her celebrated 2012 memoir, The Distance Between Us .

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On April 25, 1846, the first shots of the Mexican-American War were fired during a skirmish near the Rio Grande. In the two-year conflict that followed, U.S. forces invaded Mexico and forced it to cede huge tracts of land in the West. President James K. Polk and his supporters considered the war a fulfillment of the United States' "Manifest Destiny" to expand across North America, but while it was a military success, it was also hugely controversial and led to decades of animosity south of the border. Explore 10 fascinating facts about what has often been called America's "forgotten war."

1. Before invading Mexico, the U.S. tried to buy some of its territory.
In late-1845, President James K. Polk sent diplomat John Slidell on a secret mission to Mexico. Slidell was tasked with settling a longstanding disagreement about the border between the two countries, but he was also authorized to offer the Mexicans up to $25 million for their territories in New Mexico and California. When the Mexicans refused to consider the offer, Polk upped the ante by ordering 4,000 troops under Zachary Taylor to occupy the land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande-a region Mexico claimed as its own territory. Mexico replied by sending troops to the disputed zone, and on April 25, 1846, their cavalry attacked a patrol of American dragoons. Polk's opponents would later argue the President had goaded the Mexicans into the fight. Nevertheless, on May 13, 1846, Congress voted to declare war on Mexico by an overwhelming margin.

2. The war marked the combat debut of several future Civil War generals.
Along with future presidents Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce, the U.S. force in Mexico included many officers who later made their name on the battlefields of the Civil War. Union Generals Ulysses S. Grant, George Meade and George McClellan all served, as did many of their Confederate adversaries such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and George Pickett. Lee, then a captain in the Army Corps of Engineers, emerged from the war a hero after he scouted passes that allowed the Americans to outmaneuver the Mexicans at the Battles of Cerro Gordo and Contreras.

3. Santa Anna used the war to reclaim power in Mexico.
Most Americans considered Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna a mortal enemy for his actions at 1836's Battle of the Alamo, but the charismatic general returned to power during the Mexican-American War thanks to a surprising ally: James K. Polk. Santa Anna was languishing in Cuba when the war began, having been driven into exile after a stint as Mexico's dictator. In August 1846, he convinced the Polk administration that he would negotiate a favorable peace if he were allowed to return home through an American naval blockade. Polk took the general at his word, but shortly after setting foot on Mexican soil, Santa Anna double-crossed the Americans and organized troops to fight off the invasion. Along with reclaiming the presidency, he went on to lead the Mexicans during nearly all the war's major battles.

4. Abraham Lincoln was one of the war's harshest critics.
The invasion of Mexico was one of the first U.S. conflicts to spawn a widespread anti-war movement. Political opponents labeled "Mr. Polk's War" a shameless land grab, while abolitionists viewed it was a scheme to add more slave states to the Union. Among the more notable critics was freshman Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln, who took to the House floor in 1847 and introduced a series of resolutions demanding to know the location of the "spot of soil" where the war's first skirmish took place. Lincoln maintained that the battle had been provoked on Mexican land, and he branded Polk a cowardly seeker of "military glory." The so-called "Spot Resolutions" helped put Lincoln on the map as a politician, but they also damaged his reputation with his pro-war constituents. One Illinois newspaper even branded him "the Benedict Arnold of our district."

5. It included the U.S. military's first major amphibious attack.
The most significant phase of the Mexican-American War began in March 1847, when General Winfield Scott invaded the Mexican city of Veracruz from the sea. In what amounted to America's largest amphibious operation until World War II, the Navy used purpose-built surfboats to ferry more than 10,000 U.S. troops to the beach in just five hours. The landings were mostly unopposed by the town's outnumbered garrison, which later surrendered after an artillery bombardment and a 20-day siege. Having secured Veracruz, Scott's army launched the war's final thrust: a six-month, 265-mile fighting march to the "Halls of Montezuma" at Mexico City.

6. A band of Irish Catholics deserted the U.S. and fought for Mexico.
One of the war's most storied units was St. Patrick's Battalion, a group of U.S. soldiers who deserted the army and cast their lot with Mexico. The 200-man outfit was mostly made up of Irish Catholics and other immigrants who resented the prejudice they faced from Protestants in the United States. Under the leadership of an Irishman named John Riley, the "San Patricios" defected and became Santa Anna's elite artillery force. They served with distinction at the Battles of Buena Vista and Cerro Gordo, but most of their unit was later killed or captured during an August 1847 clash at Churubusco. Following a court martial, the U.S. Army executed around 50 of the soldiers by hanging. Several others were whipped and branded with a "D" for "deserter." Though scorned in the United States, the San Patricios became national heroes in Mexico, where they are still honored every St. Patrick's Day.

7. The Battle of Chapultepec gave rise to a famous legend in Mexico.
When they arrived in Mexico City in September 1847, U.S. forces found the western route into the capital blocked by Chapultepec Castle, an imposing fortress that was home to Mexico's military academy. General Scott ordered an artillery bombardment, and on September 13 his troops stormed the citadel and used ladders to scale its stone façade. Most of the Mexican defenders soon withdrew, but a group of six teenaged military cadets remained at their posts and fought to the last. According to battlefield lore, one cadet prevented the capture of the Mexican flag by wrapping it around his body and leaping to his death off the castle walls. While Chapultepec was lost, Mexicans hailed the six young students as the "Niños Heroes," or "Hero children." They were later honored with a large monument in Mexico City.

8. An American diplomat disobeyed orders to end the war.
As the war inched toward its conclusion in 1847, President Polk sent State Department clerk Nicholas P. Trist south of the border to seal a peace treaty with the Mexicans. Negotiations proceeded slowly at first, and in November 1847 Polk grew frustrated and ordered Trist to end the talks and return home. Trist, however, would do no such thing. Believing that he was on the verge of a breakthrough with Mexicans, he disobeyed the President's order and instead wrote a 65-page letter defending his decision to continue his peace efforts. Polk was left seething. He called Trist "destitute of honor or principle" and tried to have him removed from the U.S. Army headquarters, but he was unable to stop the negotiations. On February 2, 1848, Trist struck the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, an agreement in principle to end the war. While Polk reluctantly accepted the deal, he fired Tryst as soon as the rogue diplomat returned to the United States.

9. The war reduced the size of Mexico by more than half.
Along with relinquishing all claims to Texas, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also forced Mexico to accept an American payment of $15 million for 525,000 square miles of its territory-a plot larger than the size of Peru. The lands ceded by Mexico would later encompass all or part of the future states of California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Kansas.

10. It had one of the highest casualty rates of any American war.
The U.S. never a lost a major battle during the Mexican-American War, but the victory still proved costly. Of the 79,000 American troops who took part, 13,200 died for a mortality rate of nearly 17 percent-higher than World War I and Word War II. The vast majority were victims of diseases such as dysentery, yellow fever, malaria and smallpox. According to scholar V.J. Cirillo, a higher percentage of U.S. troops died from sickness during the Mexican invasion than any war in American history. Mexican casualties were also high, with most historians estimating as many as 25,000 dead troops and civilians.

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10 Things You May Not Know About the Mexican-American War

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On April 25, 1846, the first shots of the Mexican-American War were fired during a skirmish near the Rio Grande. In the two-year conflict that followed, U.S. forces invaded Mexico and forced it to cede huge tracts of land in the West. President James K.

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Zorro Wasn't Mexican or Spanish, But... Irish?

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Records reveal that one inspiration for the character of Zorro, a William Lamport who attempted to start a revolution in Mexico, was not Mexican or Spanish, but Irish. From the Series: Mystery Files: Zorro http://bit.ly/2g7V7TZ

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Zorro Wasn't Mexican or Spanish, But... Irish?

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Creator Smithsonian Channel Views 24,332 Video Title Zorro Wasn't Mexican or Spanish, But... Irish? Description Records reveal that one inspiration for the character of Zorro, a William Lamport who attempted to start a revolution in Mexico, was not Mexican or Spanish, but Irish.

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"Commemoration plaque to the Battalion San Patricio which fought on the side of Mexico during the unjust American invasion of Mexico 1846-48. It lists 71 names of those captured, killed or executed by the Americans in 1847. In all, 50 Saint Patrick's battalion members were officially executed by the U.S. Army. Collectively, this was the largest mass execution in United States history. The plaque is displayed on a wall of the Plaza San Jacinto, San Ángel quarter, Mexico city and was erected in 1959 in gratitude by the Mexican state."

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The Mexican flag symbols have a fascinating story behind them. The eagle on the Mexican flag alludes to an important moment in Mexican history and culture that hails back to the time of the Aztecs. Legend has it that the Aztecs were told by one of their Gods, Huitzilopochtli, that they should look on a lake for an eagle sitting upon a cactus and holding a snake in its talon...