We are so excited to end 2022 with this month’s book club reading “A Ballad of Love and Glory: A Novel” by California author Reyna Grande. Reyna shares how she wrote this novel to learn more about the war, or invasion of Mexico and to better understand the U.S.-Mexican border. In this novel, the reader is taken to the year 1846 when the war is intensifying and tells the story of a Mexican nurse who leaves her family’s ranch and an Irish soldier based on the real life Saint Patrick’s Battalion who deserts the U.S. Army to fight on the Mexican side.