The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce — Don Swaim

The novel is based on the real-life literary celebrity 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 years separating them. Throughout all he is pursued by The Damned Thing. In flashbacks and literary digressions, the reader learns about Bierce's turbulent early life and his associations with historical figures such 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 and his weird tales, 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.