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CRY MACHO by N. Richard Nash

CRY MACHO

By

Pub Date: June 11th, 1975
Publisher: Delacorte

Macho is sexual prowess--the code which bronc riders live by. Mike Milo, 38 and a Texas rodeo star, breaks his leg on a bronc, later is fired by his boss, Howard Polk, for being too old. Mike's macho is slipping. Then Howard offers him $50,000 to kidnap his eleven-year-old son, Rafa, from his Mexican ex-wife. It's Mike's last big chance at a stake for a new business. Once into Mexico City, he finds Rafa has lighted out from his mother's cleanliness mania to become a cockfighting waif. Mike tracks him down, tells the boy his father is muy m . . . . and wants him up north with his rodeo. Along the way, they have a series of misadventures which land them in Janasco, where Mike falls for a Mexican widow with four kids, Rafa takes up illegal cockfighting, and love grows between the boy and his kidnapper while they rope and break wild mustangs in the hills. When the police come down on them, Mike diverts the cops so that Rafa can escape. Wounded, Mike makes it back to Texas but decides to settle for love and his new son Rafa in Janasco. Straight storytelling, perhaps a bit sentimental.