cover image Never Lose Your Discouragements: How a Harvard Gringo Became a Mexican Innkeeper

Never Lose Your Discouragements: How a Harvard Gringo Became a Mexican Innkeeper

Alvin J. Gordon. Arcus Publishing Company, $0 (239pp) ISBN 978-0-916955-07-6

Gordon ( Our Son, Pablo ) was an actor and writer of documentary films when he visited the Mexican town of Alamos, not far south of the Arizona border, and fell in love with the area. It was formerly a silver-mining town, but the mines were closed and the population had shrunk from 30,000 to 3000. Gordon and his wife Darley bought and renovated an old building and opened it as a hotel with a restaurant, even though they had no experience in the business. This charming book is an account of their adventures and misadventures and of the people they encountered, especially Mexicans, among them artists who crafted the works the couple sold in their gift shop and a woman with seemingly miraculous curative powers. La Casa de los Tesoros is now owned by its employees and the Gordons have gone on to become innkeepers in California's Sonoma wine country. Illustrated. (Oct.)