Gaucho conjures up an image as iconic as the word cowboy. But according to historians and anthropologists, their semi-nomadic culture disappeared at the end of the nineteenth century, and no one has seen the gauchos since. Until now.

Twenty-five years ago, the government of Chile began building a road into Chilean Patagonia, one of the least-populated regions in the world. In 1995, when Nick Reding traveled down that still-unfinished road into an desolate river valley, he found himself in a closed chapter of history, among gauchos so isolated that many of them, some of whom are boys as young as thirteen, still live completely alone with their herds, hours on horseback from the nearest neighbors. In 1998, Nick returned to the valley to the tell the story of what happens when time catches up to a people whom history has forgotten.

Reding's account of the ten months he spent in Middle Cisnes, Patagonia, is a riveting, novelistic exploration of longing for change by a people and a culture that, according to history books and the Chilean government, do not even exist. There's Duck, the alcoholic with whom Reding lives and who takes Reding on long cattle drives, teaching him to ride and work as gauchos have for centuries; Duck's wife, Edith, who is convinced she is re-living the life of her estranged mother, who was, according to legend, wed to the Devil; John of the Cows, a famed cattle thief wanted for murder who takes Reding to the secret place in the mountains where he hides his stolen stock; and Tito and Alfredo, two brothers who are unsure of their age and communicate with one another through smoke signals.

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