Publisher's Synopsis
Like Carlos Fuentes's The Old Gringo, this absorbing novel...tracks Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) south of the border as the American journalist and short story writer journeys with Pancho Villa into the maelstrom of the Mexican Revolution... Fans of Bierce's writing should enjoy this semibiographical tale with a suspenseful plot as wild as some of his more fantastical works.
-Publishers Weekly
-Michael G. Kellermeyer, publisher, Oldstyle Tales Press This novel is a fiction based on Ambrose Bierce, who mysteriously vanished in Mexico in 1913. In summary: The 71-year-old Bierce crosses into revolutionary Mexico where he encounters Pancho Villa. Not only does Bierce save Pancho's life but develops a close relationship with the bandito-supremo. Dreaming of death and reliving the past, Bierce accompanies Pancho through exhilarating war-time adventures until the two men find themselves in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1915. There, Bierce meets a handsome young widow, and discovers he still has the capability of falling in love, despite the difference in their ages. Through flashbacks and literary digressions the reader learns about Bierce's turbulent early life and his associations with such historical figures as Mark Twain, Bret Harte, William Gladstone, Oscar Wilde, Theodore Roosevelt, P.T. Barnum, and William Randolph Hearst. The reader also sees Bierce's development as a chronicler of the horrors of the Civil War, his conversion into a cynic and misanthrope, his role as a major literary arbiter, and finally as a man who learns to love in his twilight years.
