Sleeping With Pancho Villa: A Novel [Hardcover]

Rick Skwiot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1998

When the gringo Jake Hart meets the seductive Marta Martinez in a dark cantina, she tells him of discovering her fiance's body decomposing in his own bath. While some in the Mexican pueblito believe it was she who did him in, suspicion soon falls on Jake - and even on his mad artist friend, Jordan, and a host of others who might have wanted to see the handsome sculptor dead. But few - not even Marta - mourn his passing nor ultimately care who murdered him. With this indifferently received homicide as a backdrop, Skwiot brings his fictional Mexican pueblito and all of its colorful inhabitants to life. Along with Jake, Marta, and Jordan, this cast includes local Revolutionary Party leader Don Pablo Martinez, who desperately needs his dentures repaired for politics to continue as usual; the ghost-rousing curandera Amelia; the gigolo Marcos, who preys on American tourists; and the philandering chief of police Munoz, who impregnates a bar maid and is turned out by his wife to sleep in his office under a portrait of Pancho Villa.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Skwiot's Chandleresque offering invigorates a familiar tale of murder and small-town political intrigue by playing it out against a thoughtfully layered backdrop of Mexican culture. Jake, an American drifter in an unnamed Mexican town, becomes a suspect in the murder of a local sculptor, Pancho. The search for the true culprit unearths the town's incestuous politics, and its economic tensions. Jake, meanwhile, has a fling with the seductive but virtuous Marta, Pancho's fiancee, despite unnerving visits from Pancho's ghost. Along the book's sleepy path we meet Jordan Freeman, a semideranged African American painter, as well as Hector Munoz, a driven but unsettled chief of police who balances his allegiance to the law with duties to two separate families. The murderer's identity comes as no surprise, since Skwiot introduces few reasonable suspects. He gives his story an impressively crafted, labyrinthine setting, but some clumsy writing, overheated subplots and cliched sex scenes detract from the book's cohesion. But Jake's adventure is gripping nonetheless, largely because Skwiot does not hide its more gruesome sides and handles scenes of grotesque violence with admirable restraint. Snappy and often funny dialogue keeps the novel and its characters moving through the crumbling houses of Skwiot's town. (Dec.) FYI: Skwiot's novel Flesh won the Hemingway First Novel Prize and will be issued by Eaton Street Press.

Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Skwiot, who won the Hemingway First Novel Prize for Flesh (Eaton Street, 1998), here brings us life in a Mexican border town, with a collection of residents, visitors, and events from their lives laid out beautifully in a novel that was runner-up for the 1996 Willa Cather Fiction Award. A Vietnam veteran, a policeman in this sleepy town, has two wives with children on either side of the border and manages to maintain relationships with both. Meanwhile, Jake, an American writer, falls in love with the beautiful Mexican Marta. When Marta's fiance, Pancho, is murdered, and an American woman in love with Jake commits suicide, Marta and Jake share love and are haunted by the two frustrated ghosts. The haunting can only end when the spirits are wed by a priest. Skwiot manages to organize these and other individuals and plots into a skillfully written portrait of an entire community. Highly recommended.?Carolyn Ellis Gonzalez, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 234 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Colorado; 1st edition (December 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870815067
• ISBN-13: 978-0870815065
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,857,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rick Skwiot is the author of the Hemingway First Novel Award winner Death in Mexico, the Willa Cather Fiction Prize finalist "Sleeping With Pancho Villa," the critically acclaimed childhood memoir "Christmas at Long Lake," and "San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of a Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing." His latest novel, "Key West Story," is being released January 2012 by Antaeus Books, Inc.

He's taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis and served as the 2004 Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is co-founder and director of the Key West Writers Lab (www.KeyWestWritersLab.org), which mentors serious novelists, memoirists and poets worldwide. A veteran journalist, he also works as a feature writer. He lives in Key West, Florida, and blogs at www.KeyWestStory.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb contemporary fiction set in Mexico, December 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping With Pancho Villa: A Novel (Hardcover)

The small Mexican town this novel is set in is virtually the main character. The author has captured the sense of the country in a way that makes me want to go back and appreciate the people better than I have as a tourist in the past.

The murder mystery is a backdrop to the characters and setting, and kept me turning the pages. But what I remember best are the people and places. I'd like to hang out with them in the kind of town I would have driven through without noticing before. Skwiot creates a vivid world, draws you into it, and makes you want to stay.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dynamic Duo, February 6, 1999

By 

William Bornefeld ([e-mail]) (St. Louis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleeping With Pancho Villa: A Novel (Hardcover)

Rick Skwiot's novels, Flesh and Sleeping With Pancho Villa, are like a fine pair of custom-made Mexican boots, crafted by hand in the good old way, with love and expertise and an eye for the important detail. You will get a lot of flash and wear from these babies and every step will surprise and comfort you as you make your way along the camino real.