The Poor Gringo Guide to Mexican Cooking

Miles Standish Pickerel lived with his mother until he was thirty-six. After brief engagements as an adulterous husband, a neglectful father, and a larcenous employee, he unsuccessfully impersonated a cardiologist, a cattle rustler, and a visiting dignitary from Guyana. Currently he is at work on the century's first compendium of Mexican mechanics. He lives anonymously in an unnamed city south of the twenty-fifth parallel.

Susan Say-less claims she was born on the next to the last day of the year in the same town as Phineas Quimby. When not performing standup comedy, playing her tsabouna, or illustrating distasteful cookbooks, she attends the University of Arizona. She purportedly is earning a bachelor's degree in English literature. She draws her own hair.