UNM Bookstore Features David Stuart, New Book

On Friday, Feb. 8 at 4 p.m. the University of New Mexico Bookstore will host a book launch for UNM Press author David Stuart and his latest novel, Flight of Souls. Stuart was a senior academic administrator for many years and is a professor of anthropology at UNM. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the UNM Bookstore at 277-5451.

Throughout his career at UNM, Stuart worked as an associate vice president for academic affairs in charge of creating a new interdisciplinary college now known as University College, and trouble-shooting administratively distressed units. Stuart also served as assistant vice president for academic affairs, a special assistant to the vice president, a professor of architecture and planning and professor of anthropology.

In his latest book, Flight of Souls, Stuart reveals early 1960s Mexico on the cusp of social change. Mexico’s rural youth flock to cities for work and a modern lifestyle. Meanwhile, the United States is interfering with Mexico’s politics as its obsession with Cuba and the spread of communism overwhelm both good sense and law. Pursuing an obsessive quest for freedom, it is to this Mexico that protagonist John Alexander, a human rights worker, turns to start a new life—only to learn that freedom has a price.

After a childhood spent in and out of foster care, orphanages, and reform school and riddled with emotional and physical abuses, Alexander is insulated with layers of anger and cynicism. He readily abandons the disillusionment that plagues him in the U.S. to pursue studies of anthropology and folklore at Mexico City’s University of the Americas. Suddenly, he finds himself caught in deep diplomatic crosscurrents surrounding a sensational murder mystery and covert schemes of the world’s superpowers. Now a fugitive forced to flee Mexico City, Alexander seeks asylum in communities steeped in Aztec tradition and is offered a rare glimpse at a world rapidly being swallowed up by modern Mexico.

David E. Stuart of Albuquerque is the author of The Guaymas Chronicles (named Southwest Book of the Year by the Tucson-Pima County Public Library, 2003) and Zone of Tolerance (PEN Southwest Award finalist, fiction) and the novel, The Ecuador Effect (PEN Southwest Award finalist, nonfiction), and numerous Southwestern anthropology books, including Anasazi America.

Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu