God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

Written by Richard Grant

Narrated by Gildart Jackson

Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source of income; murder is all but a regional pastime.



Fifteen years ago, journalist Richard Grant developed what he calls "an unfortunate fascination" with this lawless place. Locals warned that he would meet his death there, but he didn't believe them—until his last trip. During his travels Grant visited a folk healer for his insomnia and was prescribed rattlesnake pills, attended bizarre religious rituals, consorted with cocaine-snorting policemen, and dug for buried treasure. On his last visit, his reckless adventure spiraled into his own personal heart of darkness when cocaine-fueled Mexican hillbillies hunted him through the woods all night, bent on killing him for sport.



With gorgeous detail, fascinating insight, and an undercurrent of dark humor, God's Middle Finger brings to vivid life a truly unique and uncharted world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Mar 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781977374806

Richard Grant

Richard Grant is an author of nonfiction books, a journalist, and a documentary film writer. His last two books, Dispatches from Pluto and The Deepest South of All, were New York Times bestsellers. His previous books include the adventure travel classic God’s Middle Finger: Into the Heart of the Sierra Madre and American Nomads, which was made into an acclaimed BBC documentary with Grant as the writer and star. Currently a contributor to Smithsonian magazine, Grant has published journalism in Esquire, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Originally from London, England, now a US citizen, he has traveled extensively and written books about Mexico and East Africa. After several years of living in a remote farmhouse in the Mississippi Delta, an experience chronicled in the multi-award-winning Dispatches from Pluto, Grant is living in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife and daughter.

Reviews for God's Middle Finger

[catalogthis · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A fun read, though primarily for the author's insights into himself. While he does touch upon the residents and history of the Sierra Madre, most come across as caricatures rather than real people. Grant knows this, and freely acknowledges it:Here I was getting my kicks and curing my ennui in a place full of poverty and suffering, environmental and cultural destruction, widows and orphans from a slow-motion massacre. I tried to persuade myself that I was going to write something that would make a difference and help these people, but my capacity for self-delusion refused to stretch in that direction.Grant himself rubbed me the wrong way at times, though maybe that's because I've reached my lifetime capacity to tolerate glib, cavalier Brits.

[picathartes · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

To paraphrase one part of the story: the Sierra Madre / Sonora / Chihuahua / Durango / Sinaloa / Mexico is the refuse dump of all of New Spain.

This book started off really good, but then it quickly settled in to essentially the same oft repeated theme every paragraph to every sentence. My interest became dulled to the point of really having to work to finish it.

The writing was good, and occasionally appealing. Like this part below:

"Témoris was a grubby, placid, little town with chickens scratching in the front yards, coffee-can flower gardens, and dogs sleeping under rusty old pickup trucks, saving their energy for all the barking they would have to do at night."

But I got tired of the repetitive narrative: norteño and narcocorrido music, AK-47s and guns in general, never-ending violence, rape and femicide, machismo and all its downsides, scorpions, crippling poverty and apathy, environmental destruction, cartels, mafiosos, narco everything (marijuana, cocaine, opium), pickups, cowboy boots made out of one endangered species or another, hats (cowboy / trucker) adorned with AK-47s or scorpions or pot leaves, and murder and vendettas feeding a forever series of murder and vendettas.

If that's your thing then this is a great book.

Towards the end of the book, page 241 to be exact, the author had this to say:

"We drank four or five gourds each and got nicely buzzed there on the rim of Sinforosa Canyon and it occurred to me that this was more or less the moment I had been looking for when I set out on his journey. Here I was in the heart of the Sierra Madre, about as far from consumer capitalism and the comfortably familiar as I could get, drinking tesguino with a wizened old Tarahumara and feeling that edgy, excited pleasure in being alive that follows a bad scare. It was an uncomfortable realization. To put it another way, here I was getting my kicks and curing my ennui in a place full of poverty and suffering, environmental and cultural destruction, widows and orphans from a slow-motion massacre. I tried to persuade myself that I was going to write something that would make a difference and help these people, but my capacity for self-delusion refused to stretch in that direction."

When I read that, I felt that it summarized the entire book which I'd gotten in the first 40-50 pages, but had taken the author weeks and months and 241 pages. God's Middle Finger is a fairly incredible story, but wasn't quite so fulfilling as a book.

[jennybeast · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have very mixed feelings here. The writer is engaging -- he tells a good story about a fascinating place. However, he also makes really, really stupid choices, so I find it hard to care when he puts himself in danger. I don't enjoy feeling judgmental about other people, so the whole cycle is very uncomfortable to me. I read about 3/4 of the book before it had to go back to the library, and I don't feel the need to hear the rest of the adventure.

On the other hand, I knew nothing about the Sierra Madres, and the history was a very interesting read.

[patl_53 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A thrilling page turner of an adventure novel. You learn the history and current state of north central Mexico's Sierra Madre mountain range as the author tries to travel its spine in order to see if it is really as dangerous as you have heard. It feels like a mix of Sebastian Junger and Ernest Hemingway. It's hard to tell if the overwhelming narco-traffic content is embellished, but I sense that it's not. It certainly gives more perspective on the nature of the drug trade coming from Mexico to the US, and the lifestyle of those willingly or unwillingly involved.

It's not often that I bring a book to work with me and hope for red lights to be longer so I can read a bit more on stops in the drive.

[nemoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Grant travels throughout Mexico's Sierra Madre, exploring what history and culture can be gleaned from such a desolate and isolated place. It is an extremely dangerous area infested by murderous narcos. An element of voyeurism thus runs through his journeys. I liked the writing. It was not gonzo, but somehow reminded me of Hunter Thompson.

[chorn369 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Author Grant nurtured an "obsessive fascination" for Mexico's 900-mile long Sierra Madre mountain range for many years. In 2007 he began a journey through the region, beginning just over the U.S.-Mexican border in Arizona, and into the lawless Mexican states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa. The region has always been a sanctuary for revolutionaries, smugglers, criminals and other miscreants; in the late 90s it became a principal trafficking route of cocaine, heroin and marijuana into the U.S. Drugs have certainly made an already dangerous area more so, and residents of the Sierra are very generally very suspicious about outsiders. Grant profiles the region with a reporter's camera eye and he manages to uncover uncommon hospitality and humor in one of the most deadly regions of Latin America, if not the world; he also encounters many tense and dangerous situations, and ultimately barely lives to write this book.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

British travel writer Richard Grant, who lives in Arizona, recently spent some time in the Sierra Madre mountains of northwest Mexico. Normally this is not a good idea, it is home to narco gangasters, bandits, crippling poverty and general lawlessness. The murder rate in some areas is 10 times the worst American inner cities and some small town have completely wiped themselves out in blood feuds. It is the Wild West and begins just 20 miles from the US border of Arizona.

God's Middle Finger is a type of book I like to call "Dark Tourism". This could include trips to shanty towns in Brazil, walks through Afghanistan, and other "World's Most Dangerous Places". In a way books like this allow the first world to feel superior in relative security and comfort, however they rarely capture what it's really like for someone living there. By foregrounding the dangerous and violent aspects, those things that seem exotic and exciting to us as outsiders, it's difficult to know if we are getting an accurate picture of what the people are really like, or rather one seen through the eyes of an outside thrill seeker. It's not my intention to be polemical toward Grant because there are some positive things that can be said about this book. If your able to look past his adrenalin fueled focus on murder and gangsters the book is a great way to learn about some of the history and people of the Sierra Madre region of Mexico; and the nature of the Mexican drug crime problem in general, which has crossed the border where Mexicans hole up for months in remote parts of US National Parks growing pot. It is sorely lacking a map, but I was able to trace some of his route using Google Maps, which is surprisingly detailed, and combined with the satellite view, gives some idea of the extreme terrain.

The book starts and ends with a high adrenalin frame story involving an encounter with bandits - I personally found it too good to be true, too novelistic, and too easily invented (relatives of Pancho Villa?) - we will never know but most of the book seems credible. Overall I credit Grant with stoking my interest in reading more about the region (there is an excellent bibliography), although from what Grant writes, I would never want to personally go there. Many of the themes, in particular "honor cultures", can also be found in Deliverance, it's a good coda and a little closer to home for those fascinated by the dialectic between lawful society and honor cultures.

[helenthelibrarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Whoa. - Travel in the Sierra Madre is not for the feint of heart. It is foolhardy and usually fatal. I am so glad that this man survived to write about it because it is a thoroughly entertaining wild ride from the safety of my armchair.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

You know that a) this is going be good and b) this is going to be different than anything you've ever read when the opening chapter finds the author being pursued by 2 crazy men with guns in the middle of the night out in the wilds of Durango, Mexico. Naturally, after you read that chapter, with a cliffhanger for an ending, you have to wonder how he got into this predicament and you're hooked. This book just didn't let up. Grant decides that he wants to traverse the Sierra Madre Occidental, a mountain range just south of the border between Arizona & Mexico. The Sierra Madre goes south from there , for about 900 or so miles -- with canyons that are deeper than our Grand Canyon, with mines, caves, cliffs, potholed roads, little towns, drug farms and a variety of people. He begins his trip with a friend telling him not to do it but this doesn't stop Grant. Everywhere he goes he makes a new contact to help him into the areas where gringos should not be travelling alone -- often dangerous, often a bit hostile, filled with testosterone that leaks from the aura of Mexican male machismo. It's the kind of Wild West lawlessness and total anarchy that intrigues him and he finds what he's looking for everywhere he goes. At first the author really got into his journey, but after some bandit encounters, policemen trying to set him up while they share cocaine with him, the negative treatment of women by said macho men, and a brush with death, the author has had enough. But the getting there, for the reader, is a fun and wild ride that I won't soon forget. What a great book! Along with his own travels and travails, he's thrown in historical accounts of the area, biographical info about those who've lived and traveled there, and some interesting facts about the pointless war on drugs fought by the US that we're never going to win because of the huge drug economy stemming from the Sierra Madre. Incredibly interesting -- you won't want to put the book down.


Very highly recommended. I would think that most people would enjoy this book, especially people who like a sort of gonzo-feel to their reading.