Hat Dance — Michael A. Thomas

Rural Mexico is the setting for this fast-moving comic adventure story about a team of journalists who set out to investigate a rumored rebellion and film the infamous Fiesta de Santiago Ap stol in the Indian village of Huatepac. American journalist Lee White, his partner Checo Rivera, Lee's filmmaker daughter and her cameraman/boyfriend, and villagers Felipe and Elena Pi eda are objects of scorn and suspicion to Lieutenant Campos, a rapacious military bureaucrat, and Sam Cooke, the American soldier of fortune who is in the business of crushing the rebellion that's drawn Lee and Checo to the Sierra.

"A wonderful yarn that succeeds in taking the reader on a journey of suspense, compassion, and desire for justice. Anyone who has had guns aimed at them by federales or soldiers will recognize the frustration of not having a gun to shoot back. Anyone who has listened to the ethnomusicological cacophony that distinguishes rural fiestas, or witnessed the matanza of a pig, or felt and smelled the intestinal agonies within 'the fatherland of diarrhea, ' or fallen in love in the Mexican hinterland will feel at home in this book."-Jack Loeffler, author of "Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey"