new Sierra Madre travel memoir!

NEW TRAVEL MEMOIR ON SIERRA MADRE
by AWARD-WINNING AMERICAN JOURNALIST JEFF BIGGERS

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f06/biggers.html

In the Sierra Madre
Jeff Biggers

"Jeff Biggers has the keenest eye in the business, and he has a fine, luminous voice to tell you what he has seen. Biggers manages to write like a poet, a historian, a naturalist and an adventurer. His pages are burnished and alive, and I admire his work. You need to read this one soon."
-- Luis Urrea, author of The Hummingbird's Daughter and The Devil's Highway

The Sierra Madre--no other mountain range in the world possesses such a ring of intrigue. In the Sierra Madre is a groundbreaking and extraordinary memoir that chronicles the astonishing history of one of the most famous, yet unknown, regions in the world. Based on his one-year sojourn among the Raramuri/Tarahumara, award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers offers a rare look into the ways of the most resilient indigenous culture in the Americas, the exploits of Mexican mountaineers, and the fascinating parade of argonauts and accidental travelers that has journeyed into the Sierra Madre over centuries. From African explorers, Bohemian friars, Confederate and Irish war deserters, French poets, Boer and Russian commandos, Apache and Mennonite communities, bewildered archaeologists, addled writers, and legendary characters including Antonin Artaud, B. Traven, Sergei Eisenstein, George Patton, Geronimo, and Pancho Villa, Biggers uncovers the remarkable treasures of the Sierra Madre.

JEFF BIGGERS has worked as a writer, radio correspondent, and educator across the United States, Europe, Mexico, and India. Winner of the American Book Award, he is the author of The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment to America. For more, visit www.jeffbiggers.com.

"Half a century after the release of the film, Jeff Biggers brings home the true treasure of the Sierra Madre: its stories. Biggers weaves a tapestry of intertwined tales that sheds light on this little-known region. Warm-hearted and compassionate, these stories bring to life the Raramuri."
-- Michael Shapiro, author of A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk about Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration

"Once every generation a book comes along that captures the stunning terrain and hidden life of Mexico's remote western Sierra Madre. In the Sierra Madre is that book for this generation. Jeff Biggers has seen the strange and remarkable that the rest of us can only imagine."
-- Tom Miller, author of The Panama Hat Trail and On the Border



November 2006
200 pages. 6 x 9 inches.
Cloth, ISBN 0-252-03101-6. $25.95