Red Line (First Edition)

An often surreal memoir retraces the path of the Gold Rush, stumbles upon a charismatic Arizona sage, and searches after a border-town drug dealer as it portrays an American Southwest on the verge of ruin

The Southwest as portrayed in this Kerouac-esque odyssey betokening the death of the American frontier spirit is a landscape of broken dreams, violence, uprooted lives and fallen idols. Bowden ( Mezcal ), joined by a retired narcotics cop, sets out to investigate the murder of a Mexican drug dealer/hit-man outside Tucson. His obsessive, detective-like quest seems at least partly an evasion of personal problems--he has just fathered a baby out of wedlock. We meet real estate developers, sullen Indians, assorted castoffs, a Vietnam vet, a rogue archeologist and, through historical flashbacks, gold-crazed '49ers. Miles distant from tourist-poster images of the Sunbelt, this vista of narrow greed, diminished expectations and despoilation of nature sizzles with the harsh, unrelenting glare of a hyperrealist painting.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When Nacho, a brutal drug dealer and hitman, is murdered in Tucson, Southwesten journalist Bowden wanders the U.S./Mexico border in search of the forces that created him--forces that lie in the poverty and desperation of the border region so vividly chronicled here. The nonfiction narrative incorporates reporting on Southwestern places and persons; where it loses sight of Nacho, the reader's attention lags. Bowden contrasts his own life troubles both with the deterioration of the region and with the fall of Nacho but fails successfully to link this ambitious combination through analyses. In the end, he sheds little light on this troubled place. For locals only.
- Timothy L. Zindel, Hastings Coll. of the Law, San Francisco
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.