Why a Booktrail?
1960s – Not for the faint hearted – this is a journey back to drugs culture in 1960s Mexico
Mañana
What you need to know before your trail
Tod wakes up next to a dead prostitute and suddenly remembers that he had his first shot of heroin the night before. What on earth happened? When he thinks back to when he and wife Linda were partying with their wild neighbours who had fled from Mexico after robbing a Jewellry store. Now he’s awake, the place has been stripped and his hunting knife has blood on it.
Where’s Linda? Where is everyone else and why has he been left behind?
Not wanting to take the rap, and thinking they may have kidnapped Linda in order to keep her quiet, he heads off, gun in hand to track them down.
Travel Guide
Hjorstberg’s Mexico is not the kind of place you’ll want to visit mind and we think we should mention that from the outset. It’s a world full of drugs, criminal goings on and dead prostitutes.
Nevertheless, when Tod starts his search for his wife, this is a journey across Mexico and many of its smaller villages and communities and there are many dealings with the seedy underbelly of the time and place.
There’s enough detail too, to set the time and place of events – The killing of Martin Luther King is revealed in the first chapter. This is the summer of love, the time of Semana Santa.
The travelling experience Hjorstberg style –
“A biker in San Blas said to check out Barra de Navidad. We pulled into the isolated seaside village the day Che Guevara got offed in Bolivia”
Tod explores Mexico and loses his sense of morality along the way. He takes drugs, uses drugs and a lot of the Mexico we see through his eyes is when he’s under the influence. It’s not only the settings which are seen through a cloud of fog but the actions of the people in the story.
To immerse yourself in this environment from the safety of your armchair is a safe distance but there are a lot of Spanish words and phrases interwoven into the text. Gives the story an authentic edge.
Where Next?
