On the first leg of his mountain adventure, Grant meets more than his share of expert fabulists. They speak of Jesus Malverde, a 19th century bandit that today's drug traffickers honor as their patron saint. They lead him to a children's amusement park whose centerpiece is a wrecked plane that had been used for transporting drugs. They recount the alleged secret sex lives of the muy macho drug lords. Astounded by the sheer lunacy of these tales, Grant thinks he has fallen into a paradise for people, like him, who love the surreal.
Like any travel writer, Grant has a list of must-see places and events. The story he brings back when he visits a formerly well-to-do town is a seemingly simple one about hanging out with new buddies and finding that after-hours you can still keep the party going despite curfews: grandmothers, unexpected paragons of modern commerce, pass cases of black market beer and baggies of cocaine out their cute little windows. On the profane end of the spectrum is Grant's report on Holy Week ceremonies celebrated by the Tarahumara tribe in Guadalupe Coronado. A drinking contest between God and the Devil, epically carnal props, drunken dancing diablitos and untold pagan outrages against what the Jesuits first taught the tribe transport Grant to surreal and anarchic heights. And then he stops by Durango, a town both Pancho Villa and John Wayne called home.
For all the thrills, Grant can't deny that the meeting of the Sierra Madre vendetta culture with the traffic in illegal drugs has not been a good thing. The narcotics trade, which some estimate accounts for more than 50% of the Mexican national income, has overwhelmed the quirky age-old wildness of the Sierra Madres by the power of money and heavy artillery. "It's become the kind of anarchy that gives anarchy a bad name," his friend Joe Brown had told Grant, and this thrilling book shows Joe was speaking the truth.--John McFarland