In what was at first meant to be a short essay about the influential Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1988), Jazmina Barrera's deep curiosity and exploration give us a singular portrait of a complex life.

Sifting through the writer's archives at Princeton, Barrera is repeatedly thwarted in her attempt to fully know her subject. Traditional means of research--the correspondence, photos, and books--serve only to complicate and cloud the woman and her work.Who was Elena Garro, really?

She was a writer, a founder of "magical realism," a dancer. A devotee to the tarot and theI Ching. A socialite and activist on behalf of indigenous Mexicans. She was a mother and a lover who repeatedly shook off (and cheated on) her manipulative husband, Nobel-laureate Octavio Paz. And above all, she wrote with simmering anger and glittering imagination.

The Queen of Swords is a portrait of a woman that also serves as an alternative history of Mexico City; a cry-out for justice; and an homage to the unknowable. It transcends mere biography, supplanting something tidy and authoritative for a sprawling experiment in understanding.