Come Back, Carmen Miranda

About the Book

Come Back, Carmen Miranda is a collection of short stories inspired by my travels from the rakish ‘60s up to the more sober present-day, stories that range throughout Latin America - from the resorts and mountains of Mexico and Jamaica to the Quechua-speaking Andes highlands and Brazil’s Africanized city of Bahia and the beaches of Rio. And not least, to the Amazon. The characters include hippies, students, an Andean Indian gigolo, a female Episcopal priest, drug smugglers, a bush pilot, a lonely old Mexican lady, a wealthy Arab-Spanish family. The main character, though, is Latin America itself: tragic, lush, violent and romantic.

About the Author

Linda Dahl is the author of Morning Glory: a Biography of Mary Lou Williams (Pantheon 2000), a New York Times Notable Book, and Stormy Weather (Pantheon 1982), hailed as a brilliant work about women in jazz. She has published many articles and written novels. After Leaving America is “a female On-The-Road novel set in the Yucatan.” Birth in the Squatting Position is “a dark comedy about motherhood at a ‘certain age.’” And Colorblind is “a multi-generational saga about a racially-blended family in New Orleans, a story with an unpredictable ending.” Dahl lives in the Hudson Valley with her family.