Review: Pillars of Creation
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Pillars of Creation
A Quest for the Great Name in a Nietzschean World
By Carlos Nicolás Flores
Literary Fiction, Coming of Age
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Publication Date: 22 July, 2025
SYNOPSIS
Where is God amidst the mass graves, poverty, drug trafficking, and corrupt officials on the Texas-Mexico border?
Yoltic Cortez, a college dropout and aspiring writer in his mid-twenties, grapples with this question while living in an impoverished colonia. His bedridden father warns him to prepare spiritually for the challenges ahead by returning to their religious traditions and confronting the "Devil in the desert."
Encouraged by his mentor, the "Failed Poet," to pursue a literary career, Yoltic struggles to write his first book. His situation is further complicated when a young Mexican woman, fleeing the violence in northern Mexico, seeks his help.
In this Nietzschean world, a secular realm fraught with fear and loathing, where God has been declared dead, Yoltic's quest for redemption and wisdom unfolds. Pillars of Creation: A Quest for the Great Name in a Nietzschean World by Carlos Nicolás Flores offers a powerful perspective on the crisis at the Mexican-American border through the eyes of a gifted young Tejano.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A lifelong resident of the Texas-Mexico border, Carlos Nicolás Flores has much lived experience to draw from as a novelist. In Our House on Hueco, he portrays an impoverished family’s struggle to achieve the American dream. “This book feels like a classic to me,” states Naomi Shahib Nye. In Sex as a Political Condition, a satire of the cultural wars on the border, he reflects on the male condition at the end of the Cold War. In Pillars of Creation: A Quest for the Great Name in a Nietzschean (Atmosphere Press 2025), he portrays a young Chicano’s search for meaning in a world torn apart by violence on the Texas-Mexico border. According to Lily Andrews of Feather Quill Reviews, Flores “ably captures what it means to be stuck between cultures by showing how being Chicano isn’t just about language or heritage, but a constant tug-of-war between belonging and not.”
Review
Carlos Nicolas Flores’s Pillars of Creation: A Quest for the Great Name in a Nietzschean World was definitely a change of pace for my reading. Yes, it is a literary fiction that is considered a coming-of-age story, but it is still in a leage of its own. This tale takes place on the Texas-Mexico border and focuses on Yoltic Cortez. Yoltic is a 25 year old Chicano college dropout who is also an aspirint writer who is living in poverty.
The depth of this novel tells me that a lot of what happens within its pages comes from a very personal space from the author. It is definitely rich in authenticity. Yoltic deals with questions rooted in existentialism, especially when he questions where God is amongst the poverty, death, and corruption on the border. What you see on the cover is what you get with this novel, a deep influence in Nietzschean philosophy. Beliefs and religion are questioned - most definitely. Much of this is found within the relationships that Yoltic has with his mentor, his father, and Marfil, a young Mexican woman whom he attempts to help.
I found this novel to be refreshing, as it has been awhile since I’ve read a book that has made me think this much. Much of those thoughts center around the two sides of the “cultural coin” so to speak - which is just my way of saying, the difficulty of being Chicano and feeling stuck between tradition and life in the U.S. Pillars of Creation is definitely a unique work that offers the reader a chance for reflection.
I recommend this book to those readers who enjoy reading about philsophy, existentialism, the duality of the self, and of course, literary fiction. You can’t go wrong with this work.
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