According to the Penguin Groups USA website, it has "become a minor classic of Chicano literature and a core text in Latin studies programs.

The title is also an allusion to Alejo Carpentier's term "lo real maravilloso americano", "marvelous American reality",.

The two grandparents each pass on to Beto the knowledge they have preserved, in order to prepare him to return to his mother and enter the larger world.

Véa allows a place for Latino Catholicism, African American Christianity, peyote shamanism and Creole spirituality in this generous novel.

Through her character, who ceases to speak and disappears to the basement of the local convenience store after she kills her abusive boyfriend Hiawatha, the myriad voices of Buckeye Road are recorded; therefore they exist.