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| God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Grant
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (30 reviews)
Sales Rank: 18658
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Original Language), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1416534407
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.210484
EAN: 9781416534402
ASIN: 1416534407
Publication Date: March 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, Mormons, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, cowboys, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source of income; murder is all but a regional pastime. The Mexican army occasionally goes in to burn marijuana and opium crops -- the modern treasure of the Sierra Madre -- but otherwise the government stays away. In its stead are the drug lords, who have made it one of the biggest drug-producing areas in the world.Fifteen years ago, journalist Richard Grant developed what he calls "an unfortunate fascination" with this lawless place. Locals warned that he would meet his death there, but he didn't believe them -- until his last trip. During his travels Grant visited a folk healer for his insomnia and was prescribed rattlesnake pills, attended bizarre religious rituals, consorted with cocaine-snorting policemen, taught English to Guarijio Indians, and dug for buried treasure. On his last visit, his reckless adventure spiraled into his own personal heart of darkness when cocaine-fueled Mexican hillbillies hunted him through the woods all night, bent on killing him for sport. With gorgeous detail, fascinating insight, and an undercurrent of dark humor, God's Middle Finger brings to vivid life a truly unique and uncharted world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 into the heart of the lawless Sierra Madre October 8, 2008
The fabled Sierra Madre: home of the Apaches' last refuges; domain of the Tarahumaras and their unraveling culture; and mostly, the province of the narco-culture and the feuding drug lords that are currently tearing apart modern Mexico. Into this zone of danger Richard Grant warily yet confidently sails. If you have read his excellent book AMERICAN NOMADS, you will be familiar with his sense of flirting with the heart of the dangerous; for it is there that he finds the most skewed and thus most fascinating adventures.
Grant's evocative narrations capture the essence of this cruel, rugged, and mostly tormented landscape, along with its increasingly displaced inhabitants. Strangers are definitely not welcome in this neck of the woods; Grant gets as far as he does because he parlays his tenuous connections with some of the local ranchers. But this is also a place where even the ranchers who are Mormons are peripherally involved with the growing and transport of mota; the Sierra Madre is currently one tough neighborhood, where life is difficult, brutal, and callously violent. Poverty is the order of the day there, made worse by the macho narco-trafficos who are running their version of a Wild West Show.
So why would a seemingly sane person sojourn into the heart of the lawless Sierra Madre? Well, here is Mr. Grant's explanation: "Casinos bore me and I wasn't going to risk prison to make money. But I was prepared to stake my personal safety for a different reward: the heightened awareness, the thrill of the unfamiliar and the melting away of boredom that comes with going to dangerous places where I didn't belong. And I was beginning to wonder if this too was a vice."
The adventures of Richard Grant are one thing; but it is his fluid and compelling writing style that is the clincher for me. He could be writing about some dry-as-dust subject, and I would be completely taken with his tremendously fine style. This guy seems like he was destined to be a great writer, and it shows. His way of executing the scenes, his droll but thoroughly relatable humor, his intrepid sense of weaving the past alongside him as he moves into the unknown: this all makes for some first-rate reading. This is what I look for in a travel writer (very similar to Eric Hansen - see my reviews of him also).
The one flaw that this book might have is the strange and harrowing ending, positioned as it is with the book's dramatic beginning. I think it does not end well, as it leaves the reader with a sense of abrupt disorientation. But, hey, given the excellence of the book in general, this one last episode is just part of Richard Grant's wild ride through a lawless land.
Highly recommended for those in pursuit of vicarious adventuring!
The Cloud Reckoner
Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
This is Mexico October 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
At one point in this story of the author's travels in the lawless, dangerous Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico, his hosts take him to a cliff-side mountain viewpoint; they agree with him that it is a spectacular sight, remark on how lucky they are to live in such beautiful country, and then dump their garbage over the edge of the cliff. Later, he encounters villagers venerating a statute of God Himself - but it is so old and battered that only the middle finger is left unbroken. Such contrasts make up the heart of the book.
The author attempts to travel in and to describe the people of the Sierra Madre. His travels are interesting and eventful, his descriptions exact. Having lived for fifty years within a few hour's drive of most of the places he mentions (though on the American side of the border; and I have never travelled far into the Sierra Madre - he is surely a braver man than I), I find his discussions of Mexican attitudes, beliefs, lifestyle, and culture to be spot-on. What he describes is not confined to the mountains - reflections of what he sees there (increasingly including the violence) can be found throughout the country - although the isolation and hardship of life in the Sierra Madre accentuates them.
The few maps are rudimentary and give only a vague idea of the author's movements and of where the action occurs (befitting, perhaps, a travel book about a place you should never want to travel to). And in my opinion the title is a bit clumsy; possibly it was influenced by Spanish, in which such body-parts-of-the-deity phrases are more common and thus less jarring.
Otherwise, this is an excellent book. If you want to know what it is like to travel off the main highways in Mexico, and what it "feels" like to be anywhere at all in Mexico, read it. But ignore its tongue-in-cheek advice - do not eat street food in Mexico, even with lime juice.
In Depth Ride Through Hidden Mexico October 6, 2008
Author Richard Grant takes us on a wild ride through a side of Mexico I had only heard rumors about. Grant maintains the perfect balance of observer, participant, and historical perspective throughout while being honest about his reactions, his at times abject terror, and the absurdity of it all. I loved the humor - sometimes at his own expense - and the vivid portraits he paints of this area of the country. The "reality" we are given of Mexico on the news, particularly through political reports, is a far cry from the scenes in the canyons and drug ranches that Grant travels hundreds of miles through in the Sierra Madre. The funny thing is that the husband and I were looking into traveling down to the Copper Canyon area with our RV this winter after we saw a feature on the mountain biking in this area in a magazine. After reading this book, I don't think we'll venture south of Tucson!
In short, Grant goes beyond the myths, legends, and politically correct views of the Mexicans, natives, and drug traffickers in this area to the complicated truth of modern day people just trying to survive and thrive in a culture that is so completely different from our own.
There are crazy people in this world October 6, 2008
As my title suggests, there are crazy people in this world and I am happy that I get the chance to read about them......rather than mimic there actions. This true story is based on a writers journey through one of the deadliest places in Mexico due to the wilderness and, of course, the people who live there that range from simple farmers (guess what they grow) to killers who are hiding out. The Siera Madre was virtually unknown to me with the exception of a few minor memories that were sparked when the writer discussed the Apaches. Other than that, my apparent limited knowledge of geography and history allowed me to read this book with wide eyes and an "oh, I can't believe he would do something this stupid!" viewpoint. Lucky for the reader, the writer does do quite few stupid things that he was warned against doing so it puts him into situations that most of us would not be able to deal with.
The stories that the writer listens to from various people he encounters are incredible. Whether it is a discussion on Mexican/Apache wars, drug kings, or the local "healers", the story never gets boring and I found it hard to put down even after my train arrived in the station each day. I usually don't like true stories that go into a lot of history but this one was different because the writer kept the descriptions short and accompanied them with stories that were so fascinating (and sometimes you wonder if they were true....as did the writer) that it didn't bother me.
While I am not the thrill seeker by nature (like the writer), there were a few instances when I felt like I wanted to quit my job and go on a journey of some kind just so I can have stories to tell. Thankfully, common sense prevails so I will continue reading for the time being.
 Predictable, and Not That Exciting October 2, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I know, I'm not going to make any friends with this review, but, I calls 'em as I sees 'em.
First, this: Nancy Perl, Seattle's celebrity librarian, has a method for deciding when to abandon a book, and for someone like me that's a serious act, akin to betrayal, but here it is - up until the age of 50 you give the author 50 pages, and if (s)he hasn't gotten to you by then you can let the book go. For every year past 50, you give the author one less page, so by the time you reach 99, if the author hasn't grabbed you on page one, you can feel free to drop it, (it will probably slip out of your hand as your fifteenth nap of the day sets in anyway.) Today's my 62nd birthday, but even so, I gave Richard Grant 124 pages to grab me, and he didn't.
God's Middle Finger is predictable adventure journalism wherein the author, the "hero," for whatever reason - thrills, understanding, curiosity, man-hood - travels into one of the world's less pleasant places, survives, and comes out to tell us all about it. In the best of the genre we really do get to go on the hero's journey, and as the author learns something about his/her self we learn something about ourselves, and our world. Not so much with God's Middle Finger. The locale is interesting, but only nominally, the characters suffer a fatal sameness, and the situations (at least until page 124, and I suspect throughout) aren't all that enlightening. Mr. Grant goes into the Sierra Madre, meets some dicey characters, and then moves on - over and over again. I don't see how it was worth his time, it's not worth mine.
So, go ahead, click that unhelpful button, but I'm moving on to the next one...
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