Five years after the accidental death of his young wife, novelist and journalist Francisco Goldman (The Divine Husband) returned to her native Mexico City to walk the streets where they had once been happy lovers and stare down the high-speed chaos of the Mexican capital--and in so doing, wrestle with his grief. He had tried to shake his gloom by seeking professional therapy, drinking, spending time with friends and even writing an autobiographical novel about his loss (Say Her Name), but none of these could chase his profound funk. Remembering that he had vowed to live the rest of his life in her honor, he left New York City for el DF (the Distrito Federal, Mexico's equivalent of Washington, D.C.), where death seemed better understood amid the city's urban ambience of la ligereza (a kind of easy-going lightness) and "nobody, once, ever said anything about 'moving on.' "
The Interior Circuit is partly Goldman's chronicle of overcoming his sorrow in the young and hip neighborhoods of Condesa and Roma and getting his journalistic mojo back, but it is even more his take on the politics, complexity, romance and vibrancy of one of the great megacities of the world. He plugs straight into its "mysterious energy [that] seems to silently thrum from the ground, from restless volcanic earth... so much energy that in the late afternoons I don't even need coffee." It's no wonder he left New York to find his fresh start south of the border. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.