My spies tell me that author Scofield used to live in Ajijic and that Lago de Luz, the setting for her novel, is in fact Ajijic. If so, here’s her description of the village: "Lago de Luz, on the altiplano far from the sea, where it is neither hot nor cold, boasts no buildings higher than two stories, and no slick discos. It is rather a sleepy place, swollen on weekends when musicians and vendors make the plaza festive for the tourists in from the nearby city. Resident Americans and Canadians make their own social life in their suburban enclaves and trailer parks, their apartments and houses, halls and meeting rooms. The Lakeside Society is the hub of activity, the place where everyone crosses, but there are many diversions: Elk Clubs, Rotarians, Veterans Clubs, Red Cross and all the interest groups, for cards and dominoes and self-improvement. " read more

This is a compilation of photos, drawings, essays, poems, letters, parts of novels and stories and other sources, all designed to shed light on this unique and enduring Mexican festival. I was also intrigued by the odd coincidence that I happened to read it on the actual Day of the Dead, November 2. read more

The setting of the story is around 1910, the time of the Mexican Revolution and the war is an ever-present background to the story. It's a time when great cruelties were imposed on the Indian populace by the country's rulers. Indeed, genocide is the only word you could use to describe what happened. The villain of the piece is a colonel of the Rurales who makes it his personal mission to see that every Indian dies in the most hideous fashion possible. As villains go, this one is a real bastard. read more

"Like Water for Chocolate" is a sort of combined novel and cookbook. Food plays a very prominent part in the narrative. The heroine, Tita, is a wonderful cook and we are even provided with her recipes along with the action. The story is set at the time of the Mexican Revolution - 1910-1920 - in Piedras Negras in Northern Mexico. And, like so many Mexican stories, it concerns a family. The story mainly concerns Tita, the youngest daughter, the remarkable cook and originator of all those recipes. read more

Here's an interesting collection of stories of nineteen women who came on their own to Mexico in recent years to settle in the Lake Chapala area. The book consists of eighteen interviews plus the story of the author herself. The women range in age from their 40's to their 80's. Their backgrounds and experiences and approaches to life are as varied as you can imagine. read more

This novel is a kind of Mexican "Roots" - a big family survival saga covering three generations of two families, complete with a large cast of characters. Author Villaseñor has based his complex, sprawling tale on the experiences of his own family members and his interviews with them. In fact, even though this is a novel, the author has included several actual family photos of the people he's writing about. It certainly lends a measure of authenticity to the narrative. Historically, the novel covers the period from the Mexican Revolution, around 1910, to the Prohibition era in California. The action takes place in many parts of Mexico and in many states in the U.S. read more

Here's a nifty idea for a book for both Spanish language students and for people interested in Mexico. Author De Mente has found an effective way to reach both groups with a volume that takes a studious and careful look at 130 key words in Spanish and has written a couple of pages on each one. In the process, the reader is treated to a variety of knowledgeable tours through Mexican history and sociology and customs that would be hard to find elsewhere. read more

Mexican immigration into the U.S. represents "the greatest migration of people in the history of humanity." The author estimates that some 5 million legal Mexican immigrants reside in the U.S. plus there's a further 2 million illegal immigrants also in the country. read more

"My editor wanted me to write about life here in the region where we live. At that time, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Querétero ranked a page or two each in the guide books, day stops or overnighters on a tour of the ‘silver cities,’ the subject of an occasional tourist piece in a Sunday travel section, the ‘charming little town hidden away in the Mexican mountains.’ Don’t put a gloss on it, the editor said. Tell what life is really like, the good and the bad. Tell the truth a good fiction writer knows.” read more

What Luboff has set out here is all the basic information one needs on a host of topics relevant to moving to Mexico. You'll find details on acquiring residency documents, whether or not to buy or rent a house, working in Mexico, how to bring your car here, how to move your furniture here and so on. You’ll also find hints and tips on staying healthy, dining out, hiring help, what to bring on your first trip, road safety, the best ways to get from one place to another and much, much more. Indeed, there is hardly a page that doesn’t have some useful hint or tip on living here successfully. read more

Here's a rather odd novel from the author of "The Bridges of Madison Country" and "Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend". I've always thought of Waller as a writer of romances, going only by the titles of his books. This one, however, is a quite suspenseful "chase" story - complete with a rather bloody ending - as well as being a travelogue of at least one area of Mexico. The two leading characters are rather unlikely people to be involved in such a tale. read more

This is one of the really superior anthologies of articles and stories about Mexico. It's made up of some 48 items about the country taken from a wide variety of sources. And they're almost all interesting. The topics cover the gamut of attractions and delights from a dissertation on mariachis to Carlos Fuentes' essay on Mexico City's main square. read more

This is a reminiscence by Ms. Dandh about how she and her husband, Ken, retired and left their home in Massachusets and came and settled in Guadalajara. It's a month-by-month account of their first year of living in Mexico, getting to know the people and the place. read more

"The key to understanding the ‘Mexican Way’ of doing business is to recognize that business management in Mexico has traditionally been an application of cultural attitudes and customs - not the objective, pragmatic function that is associated with management in the United States and other practical-minded countries." read more

The book consists of nine short narratives - stories, if you like - each one occurring in the hazy borderline between Mexico and America - what Fuentes chooses to call the crystal frontier. read more

This is the first coffee-table book I ever reviewed and I have to say right off the bat that it's a winner. It is made up of some 200 photographs from all parts of Mexico - all of them taken from a high elevation, either an aircraft or mountaintop or, occasionally, a tall building. At first it sounds like a rather limited concept but in execution the "godlike" perspective works beautifully to highlight the uniqueness of this country. What this handsome volume delivers is a treasure trove of striking views of deserts, cities, villages, volcanoes, mountain ranges, desolate beaches, crowded beaches, jungles, individual buildings and other striking images. We look down on huge elaborate temple ruins in the midst of lush jungle or on abandoned haciendas in arid desert country, as well as on vast populated modern cities and luxury resorts. read more

Atticus Cody is a 67 year old Colorado rancher. He’s a very successful straight-shooting kind of guy. He has a son, Scott, who is a painter, evidently talented. He has gone to Mexico and is out of touch with his father. Atticus cares: Scott doesn’t seem to be concerned. When the story opens, Atticus has learned about Scott’s death, by suicide, in a place called Resurrección, near Cancun. Atticus goes to Resurrección to pick up his son’s body and return it to Colorado. There he meets up with the cast of characters who knew Scott, most of whom are, at best, hippies and bohemians, at worst, drifters and fugitives. read more

The highly improbable plot concerns two characters, Sue and Bud, who come together on a dried up mesa where there’s a lake and a nearby town. Sue is an artist, trying to find herself in Mexico. Bud is on the run from the IRS for non-payment of taxes. The two form a highly unlikely union and purchase ten acres of land in order to set up a business building houses on the slopes overlooking the lake. The story covers a few years in the lives of Sue and Bud. Other characters appear, of course. A few people do buy the houses that Bud builds. Such as the elderly Ursula who seems to have come to Mexico to die. And then there’s Fran, another lady with Mexican connections who wants to build a home in this unlikely place as a way to hang on to her handsome Mexican lover. There are also some locals who move in and out of the plot - the town mayor, a young doctor, maids, gardeners, etc. read more

Author Oster's portraits make this an excellent account of a timeless and yet changing Mexico. His approach is to focus on twenty varied individuals and use them as a reason to discuss the larger issues they represent. read more

I should confess right off the bat that this one is out of print. Amazon.com doesn’t have any copies. However, I’m sure it’s still available in libraries or used bookstores. In any case, it’s worth looking for. It’s a collection of essays and travel pieces that resulted from Lawrence’s visits to Mexico and New Mexico in the early 1920s. Some wonderful descriptive writing is to be found here. read more

“This book is about Mexico - about living, travelling and taking things as they come in a foreign country. It’s about driving conditions and health and how to cross the border. It’s about drinking the water without getting sick… It’s not about which hotels to stay in or the most interesting villages to visit. The purpose of the book is to teach you how to find out those things for yourself.” read more

Bruce Berger is an excellent guide to the Baja. He’s been going there since the mid '60s, having driven the length of the peninsula at least three times when that meant travelling more than 1,000 kilometers of single lane dirt road. One could drive for a day and meet only one other car. And you would never dream of leaving without taking plenty of food, water and gasoline plus whatever extras and spare parts you might need to fix auto problems along the way. read more

I’d love to have had this book five years ago when we first came to live in Mexico. It’s not that we ran into a string of problems then but it’s just such a useful source of information and opinion about living here it would have cut a lot of corners for us at the time. As the author says, this book is written for people of all ages who want to live in Mexico and Central America, from retirees to baby-boomers who want a new life to artists and writers who want a stimulating and less expensive way of life. read more

What a disappointment! I really enjoyed the first two books of this trilogy: All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing. But this final volume is something of a letdown. McCarthy still has that great prose gift going for him, but, in this case, it's in the service of a rather tawdry narrative. The two heroes of the first volumes come together here. To refresh your memory, they're Billy Parham and John Grady Cole. The time: 1952. The place: New Mexico and various border cities of Mexico. Our lads are a couple of ranch hands in an area that is soon to be taken over by the government for nuclear testing. The times are a-changing and a way of life is disappearing. read more

Here's Fuentes at it again, publishing short stories and novellas under a single title and trying to interlink them into a cohesive whole as he tried to do in The Crystal Frontier. The connection here is the orange tree, the symbol of Spain. read more