Esquivel's second novel, "La ley del amor" (Grijalbo 1995 Mexico), translated as "The Law of Love" (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden, Crown–Random, 1996), is described by literary critic Lydia H. Rodríguez as a "narrative deconstructs the present to create a twenty-third century where remarkable invention and familiar elements populate a gymnastically-paced text" whose "conflicts . . . set the Law of Love (as a cosmic philosophy) in motion" Literary critic Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez cautions, "Although Esquivel merges science fiction trappings with a love story in the novel, . . . [the author attempts a blueprint for a harmonious future that remains beyond the experience of present societies, a future anchored by a central philosophy that individual wholeness can be achieved only by participation in and on behalf of the community"