[1][2] Don Júbilo, born with a smile on his face, was blessed at birth with almost supernatural hearing and an instinctive understanding of all kinds of communication, from an insect's faint rustle to the sweet sighs of a woman in love.

In the era before telephone services, interpreting Morse code messages for villagers and rich landowners alike puts Júbilo at the center of many lives as his own slowly falls apart.

Lucha tries to adapt to Júbilo’s mentality that things can possess you and only love matters, an attitude that echoes the Mayan grandmother, who abhors technology because “The danger she saw was that technological advances served no purpose if they were not accompanied by an equivalent spiritual development.” Júbilo’s efforts to use Morse code at the telegraph office to deliver what the messenger should send is evidence that he takes her concerns to heart.

[3] Similarly, Publishers Weekly also lauds Esquivel's style, calling Swift as Desire a "quirky and sensual story with a moralistic twist, its cute-as-can-be characters arguing and loving with equal passion."

It declaims that "Esquivel's storytelling abilities are in top form here, and, despite its unoriginality, the novel succeeds in conveying a touching message of the power of familial and romantic love.

That ability, coupled with her dramatic use of the lush, tropical settings of her native Mexico, creates another work of fiction that acknowledges the alchemy of connection and the despair that results from severing those ties.