God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

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God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Richard Grant (Author), Gildart Jackson (Narrator), Tantor Audio (Publisher)

4.2 702 ratings

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Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source of income; murder is all but a regional pastime.

Fifteen years ago, journalist Richard Grant developed what he calls "an unfortunate fascination" with this lawless place. Locals warned that he would meet his death there, but he didn't believe them - until his last trip. During his travels Grant visited a folk healer for his insomnia and was prescribed rattlesnake pills, attended bizarre religious rituals, consorted with cocaine-snorting policemen, and dug for buried treasure. On his last visit, his reckless adventure spiraled into his own personal heart of darkness when cocaine-fueled Mexican hillbillies hunted him through the woods all night, bent on killing him for sport. With gorgeous detail, fascinating insight, and an undercurrent of dark humor, God's Middle Finger brings to vivid life a truly unique and uncharted world.

Listening Length

10 hours and 54 minutes
Author

Richard Grant
Narrator

Gildart Jackson
Audible release date

March 20, 2018
Language

English
Publisher

Tantor Audio
ASIN

B07BBSB9M3
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	10 hours and 54 minutes
Author	Richard Grant
Narrator	Gildart Jackson
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	March 20, 2018
Publisher	Tantor Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B07BBSB9M3
Best Sellers Rank	#162,774 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #128 in North America Travel & Tourism #295 in Adventure Travel (Audible Books & Originals) #322 in General Mexico Travel Guides

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4.2 out of 5

702 global ratings

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Lynda Westcott

5 Stars & 2 Thumbs Up

Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2024

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What a story! What a story teller! I didn’t have to be there to experience Grant’s adventures!! Just read it!

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Men Behaving Badly: Mexican Edition

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2009

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The combination of tribalism, machismo and modern weapons technology will stop the advance of civilization dead in its tracks. The Sierra Madre mountains, stretching from the US border into southern Mexico, possess all three elements in abundance, which makes them a place any sensible person will go out of their way to avoid. Richard Grant decides to lean into them instead, and the result is a lurid chronicle of bad roads, hard towns and evil men.

Originally inhabited by Indians eking out a subsistence living, the Sierra Madres were settled by Spanish ranchers, miners, loggers and Jesuit missionaries beginning in the 1600s. During the Mexican revolution, Pancho Villa and others used the mountains as a base and hiding place. The ejidos, communal agricultural lands granted after the revolution, became overgrazed and poorly farmed, and today the "crops that pay" are marijuana and poppies used to manufacture heroin. The economy of the region is dominated by the drug trade and the cultural tone is set by the narcotrafficantes, impulsive, violent men with a slash and burn attitude toward their lives and everyone else's.

Grant, a British journalist living in Arizona, brings his own cultural biases to his travels, those of a skeptical, rational Northern European who believes in a contractual society governed by the rule of law. Nothing he encounters conforms to those biases. He rails against the Mexican idea of machismo, which creates a never-ending cycle of drunkenness, violence, revenge and the abuse of women. (For instance, if you rape a woman but then marry her, it isn't a crime.) The rule of law gets subverted by threats and bribes from the drug traffickers. When the government sends the Army in to destroy drug crops, it wrecks the local economy and forces all the working age men to emigrate illegally to the US to make a living.

Hard and hopeless as he makes it sound, Grant also finds grace notes in his travels: a generous hospitality, an openness to the warm and sweaty aspects of living, a willingness to bring the mystical into everyday life, giving it a magical tinge at times. Grant finds Mexico compelling but baffling. He leans on The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz' masterful examination of the Mexican character, to help explain it: Indian myths, Catholic and Moorish influences from Spain, and the political ideas of the Enlightenment swirled together to create a culture that combines fatalism in the face of brute authority, a superstitious belief in practical magic and a stoic, inward personality that finds its truest emotional expression in drunken violence.

Modern Mexico is at a crossroads. It could become a democratic model for developing Latin American countries, or it could become the Afghanistan of the Americas, a corrupt, ineffectual government overwhelmed by a narcotics economy, a culture that combines a rigid behavioral code with impulsive violence. Grant's book is a good guide into what these issues look and feel like to the people living through them, day by hard day.

6 people found this helpful

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Gringo on Earth

Fabulous book--buy it and read it!

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2011

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Books that explore the true culture of various parts of Mexico are fairly rare but Richard Grant's book does it really well. This is not the story of a quick trip through Mexico's Sierra Madre. It's obviously based on the author's long exploration and good research of the region. Even though the author discusses just the Sierra Madre region, this book hits into hundreds of perfect examples of how the culture of all of Mexico works. Some readers, and some reviewers, will find it hard to accept that Grant's story is entirely plausible and represents the authentic, chaotic, lawless, smoke-and-mirrors, unique culture of the country and its people in general. Americans want to think that Mexico is just a little bit different than back home. The truth is unveiled in this book. I don't mean that all of Mexico is filled with rowdy drug runners and blood thirsty gangsters like this book discusses. But the story beneath Grant's story is of the extremely different and highly complex culture that makes up Mexico and which very few Americans or other foreigners understand very well. I've lived all over Mexico on and off for 40 years...if you want to be fascinated by Mexico's real story, take my word for it and read this excellent book. On top of that, Grant is a fine writer and has put this book together in a way that grips the reader. It can't be put down.

2 people found this helpful

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Lisa

Humm

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2015

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Not really sure of what to make of this book. I can't say that I disliked it, but I can't say that I liked it either. I felt cheated out of character development, the sights and sounds around him and overwhelmed by the constant talk of drinking and drugs without a more realistic cause and effect of the story. The whole book could have been summed up with, "went to Mexico,got wasted on everything to get information about where the next place I am going to get wasted. I never felt that I knew what was the point of the writing the book in the first place.

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Top reviews from other countries

Tiago Alves

Great book if you love these lawless stories.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 9, 2018

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The first parts of the book are full of the kind of stories you expect to read. But the prologue puts the expectations too high.

One person found this helpful

Flint

A pretty imperialistic, obnoxious look at the Copper Canyons

Reviewed in Canada on September 15, 2016

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I bought this book because I am a fan of Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. As a reader, and also as a traveller to the Copper Canyons of Mexico, I felt that this book and its story were gross exaggerations from an obnoxious author trying to have a sensational story to tell. This does not pay justice to the beautiful People of the Copper Canyons or denounce the state of violence and unrest that they suffer due to the presence of drug traffickers. It is not informative, nor, in my opinion, untertaining.

Sandman

Interesting read, but a little lighweight

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 6, 2008

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From the blurb on the cover I expected something more than this, the authors experiences arent that amazing apart from his last one which drove him out of the Sierra altogether. He meets up with some interesting characters, relates a lot of second hand information about the drugs trade, but rarely gets into the heart of things, a few people trying to sell him drugs is about as about as deep as it gets.

Granted it would have been pretty hard to get into the scene much further without getting killed, but I kept expecting him to do so. (Go deeper, not get killed.) Recommended though overall, and did make me want to go see for myself.

2 people found this helpful

Mikey

Beware...duplicate book on Amazon

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 29, 2011

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Beware...this is the same book as "Bandit Roads" by the same author, its just a different title. Not sure why its published under two different titles but Amazon doesn't tell you ! I bought both by mistake.

7 people found this helpful

belbroughton hierarchy

dragoons discovery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2012

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From an early age I was fascinated by native american indian culture,this book explores the territory of the apache peoples the Sierra Madre and Dragoon mountains.The book evokes images of people then and now as wild and fierce as the landscape.Now there are very few apache that inhabit the region but instead a wild bunch of assorted characters from folk healers to itinerant mexicans.The book captures the sense of latent menace that is always pervading even in the most seemingly harmless of situations.I had visions of one day visiting myself,but this book telling it like it is shows just how dangerous and lawless it can be.Never the less it is a fascinating read that will have your heart racing.

One person found this helpful

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God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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