by Nick Reding
First published 2002
In 1995, Nick Reding travels down an unfinished road deep into Chilean Patagonia and stumbles into Middle Cisnes, an unmapped river valley where gauchos still live as they did a century ago. He returns three years later to spend ten months among these semi-nomadic cowboys whom history has passed by. Reding moves in with Duck, an alcoholic gaucho who takes him on long cattle drives across the harsh landscape. He meets Duck's wife Edith, who believes she is reliving the life of her estranged mother, a woman local legend claims married the Devil. As Reding documents their daily struggles, he watches time finally catch up to this forgotten culture. The modern world closes in around the valley, threatening to erase the last remnants of a way of life that survived in isolation for generations.
Genres: historical-fiction, adventure, non-fiction, cultural
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Middle Cisnes, Chilean Patagonia
Period: 1995, 1998
304 pages · Paperback · Three Rivers Press
Content warnings: alcohol-abuse