Passionate Pilgrim: The Extraordinary Life of Alma Reed

Although she began her journalism career as a ``sob sister'' for the San Francisco Call , Alma Reed (1889-1966) recognized early that her forte was archeological reporting. Drawing on Reed's published writings and on interviews with her colleagues, May, a biographer ( Helen Hunt Jackson ) and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle , recreates her subject's remarkable adventures in a biography marred by a reliance on fictionalized quotations and occasional florid writing. Beginning her journeys by covering an archeological team from the Carnegie Institute that was surveying the Mayan ruins in Mexico's Yucatan in 1923, Reed broke the story of the theft of priceless objects subsequently smuggled to the Peabody Museum in Boston. After the tragic assassination of her lover, Yucatan Gov. Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Reed made expeditions to North Africa to see the ruins of Carthage, and later devoted herself to promoting the works of the Mexican artist Orozco. (Apr.)