Harper could have had another life. He grew up on the border, between two worlds. He’s not quite a failed bullfighter. He’s not a complete cowboy. He’s never really won big, and he might not be Robert Redford’s son either. He also might not have agreed to go over there, to the crazy people in the Sierra Madre mountains, to fight cows that look like the farmers who raise them. And all for a gambling debt.
Now he has no choice. Harper must find Magdalena, the village mayor’s daughter, lost in the underworld of Tijuana. And he’ll go all the way. Sometimes, he tells himself, it’s better to let yourself slip through space without any control over the world around you…
So the arenas burn. Pick-ups burn out on the road. And California gold rises from the mud.
In Matador Yankee, following in the footsteps of his hero John Harper, Jean-Baptiste Maudet takes the reader on a road trip of intoxicating smells and saturated colors, where the ghosts of history and cinema merge. America’s vertebrae crack without dislocating.
