"The Old Gringo is a perfect little#gemstone, faceted by a#master#craftsman." -CHARLES LARSEN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE BOOK WORLD Carlos Fuentes has been intrigued for forty years by stories of the cele- brated American writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce and by his#mysterious disappearance in#Mexico during the civil war there. In The Old Gringo, Fuentes imagines the fate of Bierce among#PanchoVilla's#troops and portrays the encounter of two cultures, the American and the Mexican, through the passionate triangular relationship of Bierce, a younger American woman named#HarrietWinslow come to Mexico to teach the children of a#wealthy Mexican landowner, and Tomas Arroyo, a Mexican general under Villa. This is a haunting and eloquent book in which politics and history are inextricably woven into one of the most unusual romantic stories of our time.