Vagabond Virgins — Ken Kuhlken

In the weeks before the 1979 Mexican elections, San Diego P.I. Alvaro Hickey follows newspaper accounts of the stories Baja California campesinos are spreading about visits from the Holy Virgin. Shes admonishing them to vote the corrupt and tyrannical PRI out of power. Though Alvaro doubts her divinity, hes firmly on her side. He harbors deep personal and political antipathy to the PRI, even before Lourdes Shuler comes asking him to unite her with her sister Lupe, whom she claims is the campesinos Virgin.Hes not the kind to turn down an appeal for help, especially from a beauty he senses might fill a missing part of him. Besides, the published sketch a savant girl drew of the Virgin looks identical to Lourdes. He imagines she might not have a sister. Then, on their way to dinner, they pick up a tail. Lourdes admits the man couldve been sent by her brother Andres, an advisor to the Mexican president, to retrieve the fortune in gold she stole from her dead father. She claims their father was a German Nazi, and that her sister murdered him. Alvaro chooses to stand with the lady while realizing she might become his last adventure. And as yet, even while they travel the back roads and trails of Baja, he doesnt know about the infamous comandante of the Mexican federal police who has come from the Capital to rid the land of this Virgin, who may be the lady at Alvaros side.