Rick Skwiot

Death in Mexico Rick Skwiot

Hemingway First Novel Award winner. The sensual mystery of a son's compulsive search for his father's bones-a quest that draws him into an exotic Mexican underworld of sex, mysticism, drugs and sudden violence. Vibrant yet darkly poignant, this gritty tale exposes the simmering passions-fired by jealousy, vengeance, lust and greed-when Anglo and Hispanic cultures clash...

Little love remains to be lost, seemingly, between cynical public relations man Nick Petrov and his stern, Old World, widower father. But when the eccentric emigre archeologist dies unexpectedly in a backwater Mexican town, the materialistic American son travels to retrieve his father's corpse. However, the secrets of the corrupt mountain pueblito of Escondido--and the seductive powers of a virgin witch--transform Nick's guilt-inspired journey into a quest for his own soul.

As Nick seeks answers to his father's death, he bulls his way through a labyrinth of deception, forgery and tangled passions, all superimposed over his own bitter memories of his estrangement from his father. He enters a dark world of illegal trade in Indian artifacts, white witches, malevolent drug soldiers, and quick--and quixotic--death.

This award-winning novel reveals the historic struggle of a man questing to understand the timeless ties between father and son, man and woman, life and death.