Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123917 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 390 pages

From Library Journal
With elegant prose and an artist's eye for detail, Mayo may just have written one of the best books ever about Baja California. Mayo (Sky over El Nido, which won a Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction) divides her time between Mexico City and the United States, and it's her Mexican residency and employment that give her Baja explorations an extra edge. This Mexican California, a 1000-mile-long peninsula, presents a bewildering combination of opposites. The landscape can be fierce desert or productive farmland. Baja's citizens are often desperately poor or revoltingly rich. The land attracts both opportunists and expatriates; the Jesuits arrived early on and were removed by interdict from their own church. From south to north, Mayo explores Baja's tourist -crowded Cabo San Lucas and its notorious border city, Tijuana. She travels by mule to view ancient petroglyphs and explores the ruins of long-abandoned missions. One might say she experiences to the fullest all Baja has to offer. Still, the mysterious allure of Baja California is never diminished; it remains a destination that conjures up a frisson of danger and the siren call of unexplored spaces. Highly recommended for travel collections of large public and academic libraries.
Janet Ross, formerly with Sparks Branch Lib., NV
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
C. M. Mayo’s collection Sky Over El Nido won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and she is the founding editor of the bilingual (Spanish/English) literary journal Tameme.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Paulino Pérez, an artist I would later meet in La Paz, painted a picture of a woman floating in that jewel-like yellow-green water [of the Sea of Cortés]. Her face, which emerges like a mask, is fine-featured, even beautiful but for the grayish blooms (of decomposition?) at her nostril and her lip. From a distance, she seems to be sleeping, dreaming as she floats. When I first saw the painting at the Galería de Todos Santos, I turned it sideways, then upside down. I wasn't sure which way it was supposed to hang.

Neither is Paulino Pérez. "I like to turn my paintings around," he told me. He laid his ear on his shoulder. Then he laid his other ear on his other shoulder.

"Is the woman rising or is she drowning?"

Customer Reviews

Don't go to Baja until you've read this book
God, what a read! Like a novel, almost, full of surprises and little historical bits that will enrich your visit to Baja beyond measure... it was my first visit to Mexico, in 1957, and reading this book takes me back to my childhood visions of a place where the air is miraculous, the sand clean and white, the people like brothers and sisters. Read this book in the teeth of winter, to survive the snowbound months. And if you want to give someone a gift when they're Baja-bound, give them this book. Truly a miraculous treasure.

An evocative and superbly written travelogue
Miraculous Air is an evocative and superbly written travelogue by C. M. Mayo and her travels across Baja California, also known as "the other Mexico." The title is a nod to the famous classic author John Steinbeck, who wrote "The very air here is miraculous and outlines of reality change with the moment"; and Miraculous Air does indeed reveal an eclectic and exciting land, showcasing the people who truly live up to those words. Miraculous Air is very highly recommended reading, especially for armchair travelers, as well as anyone thinking of traversing the very special California peninsula known a Baja!

Go to Baja
If you are a confirmed Baja buff or just want a great read about a special place or if you want to learn something about not just Baja but about what makes Mexico and Mexicans so unique, this book will enchant you.