gueribo
Nomad
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new Baja novel
Hi, Nomad friends--
For many years I've been researching and writing a novel about Baja California. It won the Flannery O'Connor Award and will be published September
2025 with the University of Georgia Press. A happy day!
It's fiction set in history, from the early 1800s through the 1930s. The chapters cover many places we love: the missions, the salt pans near San
Quintín, Red Rock near Santo Domingo, the boulder fields of Cataviña, the cave paintings of Sierra de San Francisco, Santa Rosalía (during the
Mexican Revolution), and the Prison Without Doors in Mulegé.
It's titled "A Desert Between Two Seas." You can learn more (or order) at my author site, www.amuia.net, or read a little more info below.
Description:
Set in the crumbling Spanish missions of nineteenth-century Baja California, this mythic novel in linked stories follows two grief-stricken people as
haunted as the desolate chapels around them: a priest who caused the drowning of a native boy by compelling him to fish for pearls, and a deaf woman
trying to outrun her murderous reputation as a pistolera. Though the stories span landscapes, villages, characters, and decades, the heart of the
novel is Baja California itself—a stark land of cactus and creosote, of russet canyons and splintered wastes of rock—where people living in the
shadow of ruined missions seek redemption on an inhospitable peninsula forsaken even by its priests.
Click HERE to read the press release, or click HERE to order. Thank you for celebrating with me!
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Don Jorge
Senior Nomad
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Registered: 8-29-2003
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Congradulations
on finishing your novel and an award too. Will order and read it soon.
My favorites so far, God and Mr. Gomez by Jack Smith the first book I read about the Baja experience, King of the Moon by Gene Kira and Baja Ha Ha by
Fred Hoctor.
Those three captured an essence of Baja and it's people. Sounds like yours might too.
Again, congratulations!
�And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry
years. It was always that way.�― John Steinbeck
"All models are wrong, but some are useful." George E.P. Box
"Nature bats last." Doug "Hayduke" Peac-ck
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gueribo
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Thank you, Don Jorge. Many happy years of researching, reading, mule riding, hiking, interviewing Baja California families . . . it's a place that
stays with you. I hope you enjoy the book. It was written with love!
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 65123
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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"It's fiction set in history, from the early 1800s through the 1930s. The chapters cover many places we love: the missions, the salt pans near San
Quintín, Red Rock near Santo Domingo, the boulder fields of Cataviña, the cave paintings of Sierra de San Francisco, Santa Rosalía
(during the Mexican Revolution), and the Prison Without Doors in Mulegé."
 May 10, 2025
So exciting to see real places mentioned (places we love) in a novel about an exciting time as Baja California changes hands from Spanish to Mexican
territory and almost becomes American and even an independent land. Its mineral and historic treasures seem to know no end...
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gueribo
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Thanks for the fresh photo, David! Red Rock features into one of the novel chapters. Santo Domingo was the first Baja mission I ever visited, years
ago.
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mtgoat666
Select Nomad
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Registered: 9-16-2006
Location: San Diego
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Mood: Hot n spicy
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cool new book. is it short stories or a novel, description indicates both?
paperbacks are getting pricy... and curious why ebook is same price as paperback?
Woke!
Hands off!
“Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres.”
“...ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America
will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
Pronoun: the royal we
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 65123
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Quote: Originally posted by gueribo  | Thanks for the fresh photo, David! Red Rock features into one of the novel chapters. Santo Domingo was the first Baja mission I ever visited, years
ago.
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My first time there wasn't until 2005, on our way home from Baja Cactus. We were visiting with Mike and Mary Ann Humfreville, in their Bay of L.A.
home the day before.
Having been back to the missions several times has permitted me to see the vanishing process or other changes at the sites. Mission San Fernando was
the first mission I went to once I was driving myself to Baja. That was in 1974, 51 years ago. It has really diminished in size since then!
After the 2005 visit to Santo Domingo, I have returned in 2014, 2017, and last weekend (2025). Fortunately, it has remained about the same those past
20 years. NICE!
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gueribo
Nomad
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| Quote: Originally posted by mtgoat666 | cool new book. is it short stories or a novel, description indicates both?
paperbacks are getting pricy... and curious why ebook is same price as paperback? |
Thanks for your question! The book is structured as a novel-in-linked-stories, which means (most of) the stories can stand alone, but there are
recurring characters. And of course--the beautiful Baja landscape links the stories as well.
Regarding the e-book, my understanding is that the publisher has the same time investment in the book (editing, design, formatting, staff) whether
it's paper or e-book.
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