Sound and Spirit of Life in a New Mexico Border Town : FACE OF AN ANGEL, b<i> y Denise Chavez</i> ; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $23, 467 pages

While most novels of the ‘90s center on the fast track--urban as well as urbane existence--Denise Chavez’s book detours off the highway of life to the gritty, fictional southern New Mexico town of Agua Oscura to introduce us to Soveida Dosamantes, a career waitress.

Chavez, in her engaging novel, takes us out for a wild cruise, full of hairpin turns. Soveida’s philosophy is: “If you are a waitress, you have to live hard, drink hard, love hard. There is no other way.” Soveida also pursues life outside the restaurant with a passion. She makes her share of mistakes, but she definitely believes that it’s better to have loved and learned than to allow life to meekly pass her by.

But in many ways the book is more than Soveida’s life story. Chavez pays tribute to everyday people--those who spend their lives serving others--the cooks, janitors, waitresses and maids. While they might live from paycheck to paycheck, Chavez recognizes that they live passionate, multidimensional lives as well, full of big drama, tragedy and joy.

A master storyteller, Chavez draws on her years as a playwright and actress to develop lively dialogue that reveals the inner thoughts and desires of her characters. Similar to the flamenco dance, Chavez’s dialogues often start at a slow, deliberate pace, then finish in a frenzied heart-stopping rhythm of passion. Her characters bring us in on back-room conversations that often are more raunchy and gut-wrenching than any soap opera.

Chavez tells us Soveida’s story of her family and its roots in Mexico. Soveida doesn’t look at her family with rose-colored glasses, but with eyes wide open, albeit often welling with tears. “I never knew my great-grandfather Manuel Dosamantes. Nor did I know my grandfather Profetario very well. To me he was a blustery man, big as the sky, always yelling at my grandmother Lupe. He was a man who lived under the yoke of his father Manuel’s perfectly balanced life.”

Throughout the novel, there’s a sense that the women are destined to pay for the sins of their fathers. Yet, the women come out victors--stronger with each passing generation.

Soveida works on a handbook for waitresses titled, “The Book of Service,” developed during her three decades working as a waitress at El Farol Restaurant. These earthy chapters--a book within the book actually--are filled with practical, often humorous observations. Take her chapter on bras and girdles: “No girdles. Tight pinching underwear is a waitress’s nightmare. That and ill-fitting shoes. There is nothing worse than a tight bra that grips the fleshy part, or panties that grab.”

Soveida sees value and art in her humble work: In the chapter titled, “The Waitress Fugue,” she observes: “Everyone should wait on tables. A waitress is the observer/observed sanctified by food. That happens on occasion. Great happiness ensues.” And: “If you are a good waitress, you forget your physical self, you become a motion, color, machine, movement itself etched on the elusive insubstantial canvas of time.”

Soveida’s whole life becomes one of service--washing her alcoholic father’s laundry after he’s divorced from her mother, and constantly tending to her mother’s physical and emotional needs. She will serve two demanding husbands, neither willing to give her the unconditional love and commitment she desperately seeks.

Soveida grows to despise her family lies and the whispers that surround her. The once-timid Soveida, whose grandmother, Mama Lupita, prayed that Soveida’s destiny was to be a nun, develops a loud and often angry voice.

As a youngster, Soveida embraces her religion. She wants to please her grandmother. She’s enthralled with stories of the saints--the more bizarre, the better. She shares the joy of her first Holy Communion as well as the emotional pain as she endures an exorcism requested by her family. Soveida continues to be drawn to the religious traditions that are integral to her cultural upbringing, but at the same time questions the doctrines. Out of her own exploration and infusion of mysticism introduced to her by her mother’s Mexican-Indian servant Oralia, Soveida forges her own brand of spirituality.

Soveida discovers that while she was serving enchiladas during the ‘60s, a whole social movement had developed around her. Her first husband, Ivan, and later her professor, J. V. Velasquez, talk at length about La Raza and being Chicanos. But while both these men can spout the popular rhetoric, Soveida seems to instinctively know in her heart and bones what it means to be Latina--with or without any labels.

Chavez peppers her dialogue with Spanish, adding to its authenticity, and giving the book the cadence and lyrical rhythm of the Southwestern Latino world. Much as Henry Roth, in his masterpiece “Call It Sleep” magically blended English and Yiddish, bringing the Jewish immigrant world alive, so Chavez has captured the sound and spirit of life near the American-Mexican border:

“Oralia was making a caldo from sirloin tips. She would throw out the meat and skim the broth, and then later bring it to Luardo to sip. . . . She had told me that Luardo was very ill. ‘ Tengo Miedo ,’ she said, her soft gray eyes watering. He was a strong man once, but no longer. Something snapped. Like Maria Mejia’s back. Some people are like that, especially men. You look at them and see victory, what others thought was a happy, successful life. But their hearts are like the swirling wind without a place to rest. Como el dicho: Quien siembra vientos recoge tempestades. Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind.”

(One minor quibble: perhaps subsequent editions might include a brief glossary of expressions, since many are--as they should be--regional, slang expressions not often found in conventional Spanish dictionaries.)

Denise Chavez’s story of a woman’s whirlwind of a life is a powerful and memorable tale.