Tortuga is an autobiographical novel that follows a teenage boy through his recovery from a severe spinal injury that left him partially paralyzed. He enters a chidren's hospital and is immersed in a strange world full of twisted, crippled bodies, each one struggling through the aftermath of disease or injury. He meets some mysterious people early on who draw him into a mystical dreamland where he is Tortuga, a turtle-man, whose spiritual path is of vital importance not just to him but to his new companions at the hospital.

For readers who are themselves disabled, this book offers a lovely journey through the frustrations and challenges of being disabled, and provides some different perspectives on limitations and how they affect us. For those readers who are not disabled this book draws you into the world of difference, a world of acute suffering and pain, but also of lasting loss and isolation. Almost all of the characters in this book are crippled in some way, but they are still fully human in spite of or perhaps in part because of their disabilities. Each of these characters is a distinctly individual person, since they cannot be easily stuffed into any generic molds of 'normal' people.

In addition this book looks deeper at what it means to be human and to live a human life. Are human vegetables living a human life? Where is the line between a good human life worth sustaining at all costs and a terrible prolonged suffering that is simply a cruel exercise of power where life is trapped at the brink of death and forced to hover there indefinitely? There are no clear answers provided here, and the boy who serves as the focus to this story recovers and returns to the life outside the hospital, leaving behind all those he meets inside who can never return to 'normal life'. Anaya pointedly doesn't say what happens to all those left behind.

Like the journey in Dante's Inferno, Anaya's tale brings us through a strange nightmare world and plops us safe and sound where we began, and leaves his readers to decide what, if anything, was gained in the process.

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I found this book tough to get through, with unrealistic dialogue among the young boys, who are living in an institution for crippled children as they recover—or linger—after paralysis, accidents or disabling disease. The main character is called Tortuga (Turtle) because he is trapped inside a plaster body cast while he heals from paralysis. The style is rather florid, with many dream sequences and would-be lyrical descriptions of the southwestern landscape, the boys' emotional ups and downs and interactions, and the landscape surrounding the hospital, especially the mountain also named Tortuga. Sorry, but this just didn't ring true to me and I struggled to finish the book and I found the style far too mystical and vague. Especially tedious for me were the main character's interactions with a mystically wise, terminally ill and paralyzed patient named Salomon. This man watches over a "garden" of severely disabled patients, trapped in iron lungs, which inspire fear in the healthier boys…but are supposed to impart wisdom of some sort to Salomon and our hero. ( )

The anguish and suffering in the story are difficult to endure, but the magic of the words and the soulful search found within entwine the reading tightly with Tortuga as he seeks healing, solace, and answers to ageless questions about suffering and the purpose of life.
The suffering of the other children torments and haunts him, but with the aid of a few inspired children, he comes to a spiritual understanding of the connectedness that binds all humanity together.
Classroom uses: selected passages may be used as springboards for discussion ( )