Description
Book SynopsisDiscover the Weird, Weird WestFor more than thirty years, journalist and author Martin J. Smith traveled the American West, chasing offbeat stories that were often bizarre, always compelling, and at times profound. His journey through that oft-idealized and misunderstood landscape has made him a witness to some of the West's most interesting places, people, and events, from his Valentine's Day at Nevada's Mustang Ranch brothel to the deathbed of a man who spent three decades building two 150-ton concrete dinosaurs in the desert. This collection of essays, often told with the wisdom and perspective of a writer looking back, chronicles in vivid detail the heroes, heels, and cultural spasms of an endlessly fascinating frontier.
Trade Review“Ride along with a savvy storyteller as he cruises the American Southwest chronicling the eccentric and the absurd, from dinosaur fabricators to Liberace mourners to mummy moguls, with star turns by Buzz Aldrin and Muhammad Ali. Martin J. Smith is an expert at seeing the big picture in the seemingly trivial. His voice is breezy, conversational and droll. Most winningly, he lets his humanity hang out by truly caring for his characters, and honoring them, however obvious their flaws.”—Tom Huth, novelist and author of the memoir Forty Years Stoned: A Journalist’s Romance “Martin J. Smith possesses a bloodhound’s nose for quirky characters. In his decades as a California journalist, he flushed out and gunsighted flocks of people who, as Joan Didion once wrote, are cursed to follow “some imperceptibly but fatally askew rainbow.” But Smith’s true gift resides in his empathy—in the gentle way he forces us to see grace and redemption in the lives of people whom most of us would be inclined to mock. This book is revealing and wry but built on a bedrock of love.” --Steve Hawk, former editor of Surfer magazine and former executive editor of Sierra magazine “Martin J. Smith is one of the great unsung writers of our generation. He writes with knowing compassion about the absurd, the surreal, and the profane, drawing the reader in with page-turning style and tender wit.”—Martin Dugard, co-author, with Bill O’Reilly, of the New York Times bestselling nonfiction Killing series “There are many unforgettable moments in Martin J. Smith’s beautifully written, wry collection of essays about quirky strivers in the modern American Southwest. I’ll never again look at the upturned tips of airplane wings without thinking of aviation pioneer Burt Rutan toiling away in the Mojave Desert. I’ll never watch ‘Pulp Fiction’ without thinking about the tumultuous life of surf guitarist Dick Dale, who lost his Newport Beach dream house but never gave up. And I will never think of a book tour without picturing the cross-country, do-it-yourself promotional trek that Smith took with a writer buddy and their four young children in rented mini-vans. When his son asks, ‘Are we there yet?,’ Smith takes it as an existential question. ‘No,’ he writes, ‘I’m not there yet.’ I beg to differ.”—Columnist Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times
