God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre.

Grant, Richard (author).

Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the Sierra Madre Mountains begin their ascent. Nine hundred miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and contains several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. Grant points out that the land is home to Indians, drug smugglers, bandits, Mormons, and opium farmers. Fifteen years ago, he explored this land, where he was chased by cocaine-fueled Mexican hillbillies seeking to kill him. He visited a folk healer hoping to cure his insomnia and was told to take rattlesnake pills, and he attended strange religious rituals. Grant also consorted with cocaine-snorting cops, taught English to Guarijio Indians, and hunted for an outlaw’s buried treasure. “I never want to set foot in the Sierra Madre again,” he writes. “I was out of courage, out of patience, out of compassion.” It was an arduous trip for Grant, but readers will be glad that he took it.