The Muleteers of the High Andes
A Novel of the Trans-Andean Trade

About this book:

High in the Andes, the winter snows are already falling—and three tons of explosive nitrate must cross the divide before the passes seal shut. In 1883, with the War of the Pacific winding down, the real battle begins on the ancient mule trails between Valparaíso and Mendoza. Veteran freight master Don Mateo Silva and the legendary arriero Esteban "El Roto" Morales lead a crew of hardened muleteers and forty mountain-bred beasts on a desperate sprint against the *viento blanco*: the white hurricane that buries the high peaks in silence and death.

Every mile upward brings new perils—treacherous ice, bandits drawn by the cargo's fortune, deserters with nothing left to lose, and the mountain itself, indifferent to human ambition. But the greatest danger may be the fragile trust between men who live by the whip and the pack-rope, where a slipped hitch or a broken girth means a plunge into the abyss. Rich with the grit of historical detail and the pulse of high-stakes adventure, *The Muleteers of the High Andes* resurrects a lost world of leather and bone, where the only law is the altitude and the only currency is survival.

From the salt fog of the Pacific coast to the frozen summit of Uspallata Pass, this is storytelling at its most visceral—a novel that puts you in the saddle, feeling the mule's breath freeze in the thin air, hearing the *madrina*'s bell cut through the blizzard. For readers who crave authentic historical adventure in the vein of Patrick O'Brian or Cormac McCarthy, here is a journey across the roof of the continent that you won't soon forget.