Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez, the editor of Lakeside’s El Ojo del Lago and a highly visible literary figure at Lakeside, worked in Hollywood for more than twenty-five years, during which he directed and/or produced five feature films and wrote some two dozen scripts, fourteen of which were either sold or optioned.

“Only Once in a Lifetime” by Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez can be purchased at various stores at Lakeside.

The revised edition expands on those early years in Ajijic and the story of the young Francisco’s relationship with his benefactor, as well as the story of the still young Francisco courting and marrying his beautiful Juanita … and later their journey to the border, to the irresistible “promise of el Norte.”

Fifteen years later, we find Francisco living alone with Emiliano, his beloved beer-drinking dog (“his favorite brand, the Mexican-made Dos XX”) in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles.

“To the east of the community was the shabby section of downtown Los Angeles, while to the west the presumed paradise of Hollywood. Echo Park, with its crumbling tenements, welfare recipients, decrepit old people, and newly-arrived Mexican immigrants, was the limbo which lay in between; the halfway point between desperation and aspiration.” In this predominantly Mexican neighborhood, any car less than fifteen years old was as rare as a four-figure bank account.”

But it is in this ordinary neighborhood during a busy twenty-four hours that the characters — rich and poor — discover that they are all “in need,” that their lives have not gone as they had hoped they would; nevertheless they can, indeed, learn to love each other, and in so doing, deepen their own lives and thereby learn to love themselves as well.

It is a fine story, well-told, filled with pathos and humor — two qualities that pervade the best novels. Each character in his or her way is trying to understand what is worth affirming in life and what connections are possible between people (and let’s not forget dogs, for that matter).

“Only Once in a Lifetime” has particular appeal to those of us who live here at Lakeside, which is where the first part of the novel is set and where the author himself now lives. Ultimately, the novel has universal appeal because the themes are profoundly human — loss, longing, defeat, desperation … and ultimately redemption in the form of renewed faith in one’s own human journey.