Stealing Benefacio's Roses

By: Martín Prechtel

Narrated by: Martín Prechtel

Following the acclaimed Secrets of the Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart, this is an expansive lyrical novel in the tradition of Indigenous oral storytelling.

Based on the author's many years of living in a Guatemalan village, Stealing Benefacio's Roses interweaves dramatic recountings of village life and the political horrors of civil war with lyric retellings of sacred Mayan myths. The story shifts expertly from timeless, with archetypal characters like Raggedy Boy and the goddess known as the Water-Skirted Beauty, to timely in the book's striking first-person narrative set in the 1980s. Prechtel shows how ancient myths can become a part of life for everyone and help nurture spiritual survival in the modern world. Though it comes third in sequence with the author's other two books, Stealing Benefacio's Roses also stands on its own as a classic work of spiritual seeking and adventure.

©2021 Martín Prechtel (P)2021 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

"Once in a decade you read a book that, for a time, renders all other books irrelevant, trivial or extraneous - Stealing Benefacio's Roses is one of these peak moments in recent literature." (Richard Grossinger)

A Story that Wants to Be Heard

This is the perfect book to be 'read' with Audible. Moving, hilarious, understated drama, raw tragedy-- this listen has it all.

Read everything Martin Prechtel offers, please!

Each word, especially spoken, are jewels life’s possibilities shine musically nudging our human hearts to become nests for cultivating our own bravery to try whatever’s personally important… which naturally begin rehydrating somewhere inside listeners as his story opens, grows, and invites learning wild things about living well~ hopefully sparking fiercely curious saying yes to that longing for discovering we can also delight in following our dreams!
Thanks so much & all good blessings this book, May much nourishing come!

Gorgeous

What a gift Prechtel has given us to both share and narrate this incredible story. His melodic rhythm and colorful storytelling has inspired me to create more beauty and to give it away, never look down and never look back at the little deaths people may try to serve.

A beautiful, relevant tale

As a teacher working with teenagers in the age of social media, this book has helped me comprehend what is missing for young people (and older ones too) as thy try to find a space to belong in the harsh landscape of modernity. The core message about falling in love with a world bigger and more beautiful than you can possibly imagine I’d one that has touched the hearts of my students as I have shared pieces of this book over the years.

I read this book a long time ago

…snd now, I’ve heard the story from Martín himself. If you’re new to his work, your classically trained ability to listen may be challenged. In part because of the way you grew up learning to listen. I can’t imagine how anyone would not immediately recognize this is storytelling at its best! But some people might not. To the first time listener; storytelling like this is rare. Force your enculturated ears to hear what’s being said. I’m thinking you may not be disappointed!

The depth of the story

Both Martin’s way of telling a story and the depth and intricacy of it have left me in awe.

Breathtakingly beautiful—stirs your indigenous soul back to life!

Early on, as an ten year old who loved reading, I came across a series of magical stories, written by someone who has long been lauded by critics as a master “world builder”—that great and beloved author being none other than JRR Tolkien. And I was spoiled for anyone else, really. In all my decades of consistent, voracious, expansive reading since, across many languages and cultures, few authors could compare to my beloved Tolkien. While there were authors I often admired deeply over the years, none could ever truly capture my spiritual heart as Tolkien had done (although Miyazaki comes close!) at almost the very beginning of my long life of happy reading, when I was just a little child reading about Middle Earth, an imaginal, tragic, lost realm that still stirs my soul to this day.

And then along comes wonderful, wise, gentle Martin Prechtel and his powerful, mellifluous, flowering, glorious, jungle-thick, Atitlan-deep writing, all about a very similar, tragic, lost realm, one filled with magical beings and seemingly ordinary people who rose to the challenge to do noble, extraordinary things in a valiant attempt to save their own precious world from falling into darkness. Laden with myths, music, lyrical poetry, cliffhanging adventures, evildoers, petty tyrants, brave young men, mystical maidens, natural beauty, and above all, tragic, poignant, heartbreaking romance, I’ve rediscovered a new world of intense beauty that touches not just my soul, but the weary indigenous heart that had been half asleep, half awake, longing to listen, wide eyed, innocent and rapt with attention, to a story being told in just this way, by just such a voice. all these long, long years, so that I could believe once again in magic and that this world was worth fighting for, still.

And again I do believe, and life is quite changed and I may never be the same from this experience. It’s true!

While reading his works is very enjoyable, I’ve found that listening to him tell these tales of his life and the magical, yet very real and horribly tragic realm of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala gives them a deeper richness and intimacy. Martin Prechtel casts a spell, but he is truly funny, too, as he reads. (Such a treat to hear him laugh at his own jokes, heh heh.)

All his books have landed now amongst my favorites, but most especially this, the lovely “Stealing Benifacio’s Roses”. Highly, highly recommended.

Exquisite Literary Craftsmanship

Many stories teach, others preach, very few rattle in your bones until they finally awaken some ancient memory from beneath the trash pile of your ancestors forgotten wisdom into sprouting into your daily life! A master storyteller teaches a true story that comes to life!

First few chapters alone are worth their own book.

The depth and eloquence of these words could maybe bring a heart back to life, that's otherwise grown numb.

A Gift and a teaching

For all that love Martin Prechtel's books, to have Stealing Benefacio's Roses read by Martin is areal gift. Thank you Martin