Radio Frontera!: A Novel

It first set the airwaves afire in 1928: 100,000 megawatts of raw, unregulated flamethrower power from south of the Rio Grande. Founded by a quack surgeon, it endured assaults by the Mexican army, launched the careers of evangelists and movie stars, and helped a cultural menace called rock’n’roll seduce the teenagers of North America. But in the summer of 1985, XAMO 1530 AM radio is a ramshackle, low-voltage shadow of its “border blaster” heyday. That is, until an enigmatic runaway variousl...