Swift as Desire (in Spanish Tan veloz como el deseo) is a 2001 novel by the Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. Plot synopsis 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. He used his gift to become the peacemaker in his family, slyly mistranslating between his Spanish-speaking grandmother doña Jesusa, and his Mayan-speaking grandmother doña Itzel, who argue incessantly because the grandmother is angry her son married a non-Mayan, and doña Itzel is determined that Júbilo grow up connected to his heritage. Though the two women may say cruel things to each other, Júbilo gives each woman what she needs to hear, a skill he hones as a little boy that serves him well when he becomes a telegraph operator in adulthood. At age fifteen Júbilo meets thirteen-year-old Lucha from a well-to-do family. Engaging in a slow, chaste relationship for seven years, the couple decide to get married. Passionate sexual creatures, Júbilo and Lucha communicate their love physically and frequently. Esquivel uses magical realism to tune Júbilo into frequencies that help him communicate verbally and with his body when he’s with his wife. Abandoning his dream to become a singer, Júbilo becomes a telegraph operator to support his young family. 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, the daughter of a wealthy family, is distressed by their relative poverty and her inability to conceive again after their first child, Raul, is born. Júbilo does the best he can, but his weakness for alcohol gets the better of him. 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. However, she is unable to forgive him for the death of their second son, Ramiro The narrative exists in two main timelines: First,