"Servants and their Masters," by Fergus Reid Buckley

highwayscribery knows first-hand how falling in love with that magnificent state of place and mind known as Spain comes at a price.

Had he fallen in love with England, author Fergus Reid Buckley's "Servants and their Masters," might have become a text of reference in matters related to that country's mid-20th century aristocracy.

Perhaps the BBC might have picked it up and sorted out a new "Forsythe Saga" series, or an "Upstairs Downstairs."

In penning his nine-book, many-hundred-paged epic, Buckley learned that, "I don't think you can sell novels chock full of Spanish names to American readers."

Yet.

But clearly, writing "Servants and Their Masters," brought joys to an author who immersed himself in all things Spanish, learned to dance flamenco, and clap the various compas that mark the form's musical time, as preparation.

There are books aplenty about the Spanish Civil War. The horrors, or relative peace, of the Franco era are documented in fiction and nonfiction alike. The vaunted democratic transition is still being written about by those who forged it.

But "Servants and Their Masters," stands practically alone in its English-language rendering of 1960s Spain. A period when the country slouched toward prosperity and into the community of Western democracies in spite of the dictator's longevity.

The tale begins with the unflattering portrait of a softened aristocracy eating, drinking and whoring away its dwindling influence in a Madrid exploding with recent wealth and a newfound rich to exploit it.

Supporting this decadent class are a cast of brigands, victims, guttersnipes, schemers, sex predators, and bordello types rendered ever-so-faithfully, by a gentleman who has seen much in his days.

Says Buckley, "I have never been able to comprehend a character unless I had some fix on that person's parents and kin and the society that person descended from. I view almost everything from a perspective of three generations, when, and only then, the person begins to make sense to me."

As such, "Servants," bounds from the death-rattle of the noble clan under its microscope, to the centuries-old warfare they engaged in their northern homeland of Sacedon, while weaving in the progress of a recent Basque peasant for fine measure.

Almost every character gets (at least) one chapter about themselves, their background, urges and vices, without the exposition ever getting in the way because, given its obvious size, the reader is aware of their commitment to something large and worthwhile. And also because Buckley's scenario grabs from the start while establishing a fever for illumination.

The author is a rambunctious prosodic force, in command of English and possessing a vocabulary both extensive and colorful. Moods change throughout the yarn's meticulous unspooling, sometimes macabre, others satirical, alternately noir-like, journalistic, philosophic, or comical.

In a favorite moment, Buckley resorts to thick and somber strokes in conjuring a poem of the coastal Basque country:

"On clear days, especially in the autumn, when the air seems to have been distilled in crystal goblets, their highest crags are sculpted against the horizon. More often, the crags are shut out; and clouds rolling, rumbling herds press down and nearly snag themselves on the belltower of the church, and often blot out entirely the ruins of the castle. The whole northwestern flank of Spain heaves down to the Cantabrian in a front scalloped by coves and tidal lagoons, great bluffs, studding the coast and forming amphitheatres connected to each and within vast sand beaches stretch like ligaments."

Highlighting that passage exalts the writer, but misrepresents the larger work wherein Buckley's rapier pen renders mordant portraiture of rotten people both high and low on the social ladder.

There are good people, too, but they're for contrast and respite from the psychic and physical slaughter the ugly ones unleash.

"Servants" links the lower class with the highest until a reader begins to forget who hails from which side.

Which is somewhat the point Buckley is trying to make through the glib and insightful narrative recounted by the American businessman C.O. Jones in an ambience that effectively blurs which way is up and which way down.

"An American Family: The Buckleys" by Reid Buckley

An American Family: The Buckleys is the story of a youthful and ambitious clan that grew great together with the young and ambitious country in which they lived.

We have before us a gaggle of children born with the 20th Century. Children reared by proper and upright parents who accepted nothing less than perfection from them. In exchange they gained lives on sprawling estates with names like "Great Elm," and "Kamschatka."

They pursued overseas educations and employed nannies who alternately taught French and administered castor oil. They rode horses, walked their property lines shooting quail and rabbits...

Of course, the Buckleys were not just any American family. the large brood of William Sr., and Aloise grew up to be a rather potent bunch who left their traces upon the thin ice of American culture.

This story charts trajectories of the famed conservative ideologue William Jr., the one-term Conservative Party senator from New York, James, and a bevy of other sisters and brothers in lesser, if equally loving, detail.

Nonetheless, brother Reid's real purpose here is scripting a Valentine to his parents. He crafts a recollection demonstrating the strength of their imprint on the offspring.

"Our bonding as a family of individuals has expressed itself in the social, spiritual, and intellectual dimensions in astonishing degree," the author writes. "Though we differ widely among ourselves, and almost always, when coming together, argue fiercely, it's often as though the ten of us were extruded from the same toothpaste tube."

Which is to say, not a single one of The Buckley's sprawling progeny strayed from the family's profound Catholicism or credo of self-reliance.

Buckley's mom has an interesting background out of old New Orleans, a sturdy character with positive energy, and discrete charms, and Buckley canonizes her in the way those of us who love our mothers do.

But the chestnut here is Bill Sr.

For those of you who thought the Buckleys were a blue-blooded crowd with fake English accents out of Connecticut, the family’s southern, even Confederate, roots may come as something of a surprise.

Big Buckley hailed out of deep south Texas and made his first bundle of serious money in, of all places, Mexico. There he successfully "wildcatted," for oil and helped develop Tampico before his catholic principles ran afoul of the new revolutionary (and anti-clerical) government, which threw him out of the country.

Dad was forced to "start all over," but not in the way most of us would, which is why his story is worth a read.

Buckley lived large for a number of years, popping children hither and thither, housing them in impressive realty, without letting on that his was a shirtsleeve operation. He eventually struck some more oil in Venezuela. Only then was the future security and prominence of the family America came to know was assured.

The children's textured lives in Texas, Mexico, Connecticut and South Carolina make for worthy recounting and Reid, like all the lucky long-lived, enjoys the reserved grace of explaining a disappeared world to us.

An accomplished, if not widely celebrated novelist, Buckley's well-developed mind and pen combine to render credentialed insight regarding Mexico. He is, too, great at recalling the eccentric and authentic characters populating his past, delighting and reveling in them.

He is looking back on a fulfilling and eventful life.

The book's lure may dim for some when Reid Buckley steps aside to punch in an article written by one or another of his many siblings about the good old days, which they certainly were.

He declares conservatism, such as the clan purveyed it, dead. And the brainy Buckleys do not appear to have much in common with that breed of rural no-nothing carrying the banner today.

"On the ideological level, we inherited an anachronism that we have tried lifelong to defend and perpetuate," he writes of the family's run through American politics. "Vain endeavor. Our parents were the product of a nation that has vanished, and we, their children, have manned the ramparts in defense of that ghost. From this standpoint, our existences have been futile, our works folly."

Indeed, "An American Family," views the world through the dark lens of an aged fellow looking backward, weighed down by the loss of so much family and so many contemporaries. It is a tome that loves the past.

His parents' time, he notes, "was the age of American infallibility. How lucky they were, both of them, born to the simultaneous emergence of our country from its international status as an exotic experiment in a faraway and uncouth region of the globe to become economically and militarily the central power on earth."

Reid Buckley is something of a fuddy-duddy. He seems proud of it, and even makes it look good. He likes what he likes, and don’t be surprised if your lifestyle or personal philosophy doesn‘t meet with his approval.

The things he approves of, and the type of person he admires, are gone from the scene, and this book recuperates their memory one last time.