The Guaymas Chronicles: La Mandadera

Stuart's book is at once touching, funny, and heart breaking. It tells the story of his life in Guaymas, Mexico in 1970 and how his life was changed with the influance of a scruffy street urchin who he made his Mansasera. Although only 10 years old, she knew more about 'la movida' (the moves' than he ever expected. Together they enter busdiness and manage to 'do things for people'. Together with an assorment of other colourful characters, Stuarts portrait of life in Guaymas is one of those books that is contagious - buy it and get one for a friend.

This non-fiction book covers several months in the life of the author during his stay in Guaymas, Mexico in the early 1970s. Jilted by his fiancee and soured on grad school, Stuart stays in town with vague ideas about making a life for himself there. What happens as he tries to make plans is woven with threads from the lives of the people who come to mean so much to him. Chief among these is the orphan street-child Lupita, and the author's friendship with her is the axis around which the story spins. Stuart's prose style is not the most sophisticated, but his keen insight into humanity and culture more than compensate. Guaymas and its people are vividly described--with both honesty and respect--and reflect well the delicate mix of emotions Stuart must confront as a foreigner in their midst.There were times I missed sleep because I couldn't put this book down; there were others when the story was so intense I had to leave it alone for a while. One can hardly ask for more.Don't wait--read this book now.

This book has it all: adventure, love, sex, humor, pathos. The story is beautifully and colorfully told, the characters unforgettable. Stuart captures the paradoxes that are Mexico, yet the fundamental warmth of the people always comes through. It would make a great screenplay.

Is this the adventurous story of a young man's coming of age, or a fitting tribute to an indomitable human spirit embodied in a fascinating little girl? This book is both, for one tale cannot be told without the other. Many thanks to the author for baring the trials and tribulations of youth in order to share with us the story of Lupita, one who ranks among the greatest of persons for all her young years. Entertwined with these two tales are the lives of the people of Guaymas, accompanied by the author's profound insights into the lessons their culture can teach us. This is a book written with humility and grace -- a well-told tale that cannot be put down once it is begun.

David Stuart's GUAYMAS CHRONICLES is an intensely personal human story of great beauty and honesty, skillfully and honestly told. No one could fail to identify with either the author/narrator, or the central figure in this true story, young Lupita, a girl of Mexico's streets, whose story of abandonment by her prostitute mother, and brief but wonderfully revealed redemption through friendship with the narrator was as moving to me as Jack London's immortal tale of relationship between two beings, CALL OF THE WILD.As a work of anthropology, it reveals the true social structure of Mexico with great force, clarity, and simplicity, including much of the conflicted nature of Mexico's relationship with Los Estados Unidos. A book I can recommend wholeheartedly to anyone, because it speaks directly and vividly to all the eternal themes of the human condition.