Desierto: Memories of the Future

Here Bowden ( Blue Desert ) probes the spiritual decadence of those arid lands that knife into Mexico from southern Arizona, the desierto. For the author, this is home turf, and he knows it well. What he shows is a harsh land repeatedly exploited by a greedy white culture and now ruled by drug lords and land barons. He focuses on the victims living in fearful and impoverished Sonoran villages, shifting his gaze at times to the exploiters, like Phoenix developer Charles Keating and a Tucson drug trafficker identified only as Mr. Tombstone. (Bowden's fascination with predators also informs his observations on another local kingpin, the mountain lion.) The pages brim with gore, lust and folly. Bowden sees the region as equally barren of imagination and topography, and forecasts a gloomy future in which the old problems will arise again and again. (June)