"In this follow-up to her acclaimed book Islands in the Clouds, Isabella Tree takes us on a journey into the heart of Mexico, beginning in Mexico City and then traveling among five completely different Mexican cultures that are little known within their own country, let alone the outside world. She takes part in shamanic rituals with the Maya in war-torn Chiapas; revels through the night with transvestites and matriarchs in Juchitan; awaits the arrival of the spirits for the Night of the Dead in an ancient graveyard on Lake Patzcuaro; joins the princely Huichol Indians on a pilgrimage into the remote Sierra Madre partaking of the hallucinogenic peyote cactus in the process; and spends a bloodthirsty Easter among self-flagellating penitents." "The Mexico she unearths is a country of extremes; where devout Catholicism goes hand in hand with pagan ritual; where obsession with death is intertwined with a love of life and a passion for fiesta; where thrusting matriarchies thrive within a national culture of machismo. Mexico, she discovers, is a place of violence and tenderness, stark realities and ancient mysticism. It is also a country on the move, determined to free itself from its brutal colonial and revolutionary past and embrace genuine democracy for the very first time."--BOOK JACKET.