Charles Bowden

Desierto

"A compelling and wonderfully poetic book. . . . A forthright and thrillingly good writer." —Ron Hansen, New York Times Book Review

Charles Bowden has refined a way of writing about nature, and man in and against nature, that is as compelling and individual as it is free of conventional pieties. Desierto brings his method to a new pitch of mournful lyricism and visionary power. Whether his subject is S&L predator Charles Keating, building his desert empire on shifting financial sands; the mountain lions, different sorts of predators, whose essence as killers escapes the mountains of data complies on them; the brutal drug kingpins who are the heart of la problema in Mexico; or the indigenous Seris and Yaquis, living half in this world and half in the world of their aboriginal imagination, Bowden is a constant witness to the southwestern desert's endurance amid our civilization's decline.

"An inspired and idiosyncratic book . . . Bowden's anger and confusion are the genuine products of American life and his work, for all its luridity, comes from his heart." —Gary Amdahl, Hungry Mind Review

"Where most ecologically minded writers draw a clean line in the sand between man and nature, Bowden stomps all over the sanctimonious boundary, in the process merging history and natural history into a spooky and seamless narrative." —Esquire