Sandi K W. (Sandiinmississippi) reviewed on 3/18/2015 + 265 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

Richard Grant heads into the Sierra Madre mainly to have an adventure and experience the kind of out-of-control, wild-west behaviors and events we have come to expect from this area. He initially spells out all the old myths & ideas and that kind of made me doubt the book would be 'all that.' However, it was! The lawlessness & macho & reckless behavior get a little old about 2/3 of the way through. And in many ways that's what the book tells us; the theme may be that, while romantic & exciting, such things make a tough way to live. Nothing he sees or does changes Grant, he participates in the sense of trying to understand why natives feel as they do about outsiders.

He doesn't moralize about dope trade but he does make it clear that the Sierra Madre has come to be very hard to take, despite many beautiful aspects, mainly because of how people there find growing and selling drugs is truly the only way to make much of a living in such rough country. Don't let the language completely turn you off. Grant obviously doesn't care for the peppering of every conversation with curses, so he goes over the top to start out with and to get his reader to understand that one of the things he finds strange is that nearly everyone he encounters uses 'colorful' language at all times. It's part of the macho pose. You'll like some of the people he meets and disrespect others - but the book held my interest 100% start to finish.

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