A FARAWAY COUNTRY
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by Frank Hilaire
Price: $24.95
518 Pages, Paperback, 6 x 9
ISBN-10: 0-9797489-0-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-9797489-0-5
It's early '95, and from across cultures and untold miles, PK heeds psychical prompts from a tiny Maya girl and heads south in an old Dodge van.
Along the way, flashbacks revisit his 11 years in prison, an escape from
Folsom, and how, upon release in '70, he finds employment as an "agent of Mexico's dedicated guerrillas." Now decades later, we follow our "two-fisted killer man" to Chiapas, to mysterious Maya Mexico.
Against a backdrop of Zapatistas (EZLN) locked in a mortal struggle with NAFTA and an amoral government, we meet immensely memorable characters, among them: otherlaw Gat, footless Vietnam vet; China-eyed Ana, psychedelic sorceress; flamboyant Biga, tormented Maya street queen; beautiful Nichim, slave girl; Wiz-wiz, Zapatista warrior woman; we follow the Fills-seekers of Atlantis and 60ish ex-pats--as they dodge the $30,000 "official adoptions racket" to legally become the "birth"parents of baby Dream: cost--$12..
With "long-term hard-timer" PK as guide, A FARAWAY COUNTRY probes tinderbox Maya-Mexico while offering a troubling view of Mexico as a viciously apartheid culture, a deftly-manipulated penitentiary to millions, and just another US-propped failed state.
About The Author
Hilaire's edgy characters might be reflections of his own recklessness. At an early age, he approached life's edge--and jumped. In freefall, he spent his teens in California reformatories, including legendary PSI, arguably the toughest juvenile prison on earth; by 17, he was packed off to the Big House for 11 years. In '68, youngest con on the yard, he escaped "escape-proof" Folsom Prison. Recaptured, he wrote a novel (THANATOS, EP Dutton, 1971) which facilitated a second "escape" in 1970. But by '75, still freefalling, he'd landed on FBI wanted posters for various alleged offenses, including neutrality violations--specifically: flying a weapons-for-weed WW II bomber for Mexican guerrillas. After surrendering in '78, and subsequent findings of not guilty on all charges,
he wrote a second novel (TRAFICANTE, St Martins Press, 1980). In '95, prodded by "the ghost of an old pal," he arrived in high-octane Zapatista country. Hilaire can be contacted at afarawaycountry@aol.com.
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