Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico

Book Synopsis: This exquisite book is a rare jewel in the literature of Mexico and its little-known peninsula, Baja California. Describing her adventures on this austere and beautiful slip of land, C. M. Mayo creates a multi-layered map of place filled with daredevil aviators, sea turtle researchers, Stone Age cave painters, and countless other colorful characters. Covering Baja from Cabo San Lucas to Tijuana, Mayo's wit and curiosity help her weave a story that seamlessly combines history, myth, art, and local color.

"With elegant prose and an artist's eye for detail, Mayo may just have written one of the best books ever about Baja California. Highly recommended"Library Journal

"Ay, if only I had been at C.M. Mayo's side in her rendezvous through Baja California... My recourse is her joyful, intellectually sparkling chronicle"Ilan Staváns, author of The Hispanic Condition

"Perhaps the best new book about Mexico (and — indirectly — its northern neighbor) in many years.... This book has our highest recommendation. It is a joy."Interamerican Studies Institute

"A breathtaking vision of the past, present, and future of [Baja California]... Meticulously researched... a valuable combination of historical and social study"El Paso Times

"A luminous exploration of Baja California, from its southern tip at Cabo San Lucas to its 'lost city' of Tijuana... [Mayo] takes the fiction writer's impulse and blends it with the instincts of a journalist to create a work of nonfiction that elides into modern myth"Los Angeles Times Book Review

"This is the one book that truly deserves the "highly recommended" label for us Mexicophiles."The Mexico File

"Miraculous Air is rich with its own evocative descriptions of the peninsula's raw beauty.. Her journey of 1,000 miles is a trip worth taking."The San Diego Union-Tribune

"A beguiling picture of an exasperating place 'where nothing is as it seems,' a place both 'touched with evil' and blessed with beauty and hope... a stunning portrait of Baja California" Sara Mansfield Taber, author of Dusk on the Campo

"C.M. Mayo uses a reporter's instincts, an artist's eye, and a deft literary touch to create visions of Baja California to delight those who know it best and offers a knowing introduction to others who resort to the pleasures of these pages. A sensitive and knowing over-view of a place and a people so near and yet so far from the U.S. or Mexico."Harry W. Crosby, author of Antigua California

C.M. Mayo is the author of Sky Over El Nido, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, winner of the National Indie Excellence Award for History, and the novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, selected a best book of 2009 by Library Journal. An avid translator, she is editor of the collection of 24 Mexican writers, many in translation for the first time, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. Visit her website at www.cmmayo.com