With Christmas in Honduras: Men, Myths, and Miscreants in Modern Central America

Over the last twenty years, Lucius Shepard has carved out a unique place for himself in American literature, a hard-to-classify territory between fantasy and literature that is infused at once with a strong political sensibility, a sense of history, and elements of fantasy. His first work of nonfiction, With Christmas in Honduras revolves around Shepard's time spent in Central America over the last thirty years and his fascination with Lee Christmas, a real-life soldier of fortune instrumental in establishing the United Fruit Company. Christmas, a Louisiana railroad engineer who wrecked his train in the United States, fled south to Honduras to find work and wound up becoming a general in the Honduran army. he and his asstant, "Machine Gun" Guy Malony, were tremendously influential in Central America and the United States, together becoming major players in the fruit company's transition from business enterprise to murderous oppressor. The twisted legacy of Christmas in today's Central America is recounted here as well — drug dealers, stranded American veterans of the contra war, and failed American businessmen who came to exploit the country. Interweaving these many threads with his own story, Shepard has created a classic of narrative nonfiction.