Mezcal

An odyssey into Mexico fueled by liquor and drugs..radical politics at the University of Wisconsin...homesteading in New England...cleansing the soul in the desert...a Midwestern pilgrimage seeking roots, finding ruin...Mezcal takes in all of these scenes as it charts the disintegration of the land, the loss of friends to drugs, the decline of American innocence. Charles Bowden speaks for those Americans whose values were molded over the past quarter century, and as one who has chosen to make his stand in the southwestern deserts. This autobiographical work is a tribute to survival in the face of madness, a reconciliation with the past. A book haunted by the ghosts of Richard Fariña and Jack Kerouac, Mezcal embodies the spirit of restlessness and the hope of finding a home.--From jacket flap