About this item
A daughter's quest to understand her charismatic and troubled father, a self-mythologizing Mexican immigrant who crosses borders both real and illusory - between sanity and madness, science and spirituality, life and death Papi, dnde ests Throughout Jean Guerrero's childhood, her father, Marco Antonio, was an erratic and elusive presence. A self-taught genius at fixing, creating, and conjuring things - including visions of himself as a shaman, dreamcaster, and animal whisperer that enchanted his young daughter - he gradually began to lose himself in his peculiar obsessions, careening wildly between reality and hallucination. In time, he fled his family and responsibilities - to Asia, Europe, and eventually back to Mexico. He succumbed to drug- and alcohol-fueled manias, while suffering the effects of what he said were CIA mind-control experiments. As soon as she was old enough, Jean set out after him. She became a journalist, hoping to find answers to the questions he left behind. In this lyrical, haunting memoir, Jean Guerrero tries to locate the border between truth and fantasy as she searches for explanations for her father's behavior. Refusing to accept an alleged schizophrenia diagnosis at face value, she takes Marco Antonio's dark paranoia seriously and investigates all his wildest claims. She crisscrosses the Mexican-American border to unearth the stories of cousins and grandparents and discovers a chain of fabulists and mystics in her lineage, going back to her great-great grandmother, a clairvoyant curandera who was paid to summon spirits from the afterlife. As she delves deeper and deeper into her family's shadowy past, Jean begins mirroring her father's self-destructive behavior. She risks death on her adventures, imperiling everything in her quest to redeem her father from the underworld of his delusions. In the tradition of beautifully written memoirs such as The Liar's Club and The Glass Castle, Crux is both a riveting adventure story and a profoundly original exploration of the human psyche, the mysteries of our most intimate relationships - and ourselves. Advance praise for Crux "Jean Guerrero has done excellent reporting from the U.S./Mexico borderlands. Now she examines the more mysterious borders of family history and that unknown region of the heart. You will be moved by Crux - this book is powerful and true." - Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway
About the Author
Jean Guerrero is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda. Her first book, Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, won a PEN Literary Award. Her writing is featured in The Best American Essays 2019. She is an Emmy-winning investigative reporter, contributing to NPR and the PBS NewsHour. She started her career at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires as a foreign correspondent in Mexico.
