I ordered “Andre, As I Knew Him” mostly to support a fellow writer and old friend, Dorit (Doris to me) Edut, never dreaming I would find this biographical sketch and memoir as engaging, poignant — and in parts even fascinating — as I did. 

I’d known Doris for years, long before she temporarily left her home and Israeli husband in Detroit for four years to study to become a rabbi in New York City. When she wrote me in February that she’d “finally” finished the book, 18 years after the events in its final pages, I knew that “Andre” must contain something compelling enough to merit such determination. Maybe it was the surprising coincidence revealed to Edut by Andre’s sister after his death — that the young, Bolivian-born, undocumented superintendent of her New York apartment building, whom she first met as he almost passed her on his bicycle on a busy New York street, was Jewish too.

The book is peppered with moments like this, with Edut at times noting something compelling her to ask questions and make remarks to Andre that piqued his revelations and earned his trust. She writes of her experience counseling troubled urban families, including gang members, yet Andre seems very different. As Andre’s tenant, Edut relied on him for fixing her faucet. And as his burgeoning non-romantic friend, she leaned on him for a fun introduction to New York, which grew into a bond so deep that it ended with her arranging for the headstone of his grave in an interfaith cemetery in Queens.

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Tlajomulco’s nickname “Mexican Chernobyl” went viral in 2022 after popular Mexican influencer Yulay (2.7 million Instagram followers) explored the abandoned Lomas del Mirador development on TikTok. His video amassed millions of views, and the term — referring not to radiation but to the eerie vastness of unfinished and empty housing — quickly became a social media phenomenon.

Copal smoke rises into the evening air on the plaza of San Sebastián de Analco, atop the remains of an Indigenous settlement that predates modern Guadalajara.

A circle of white-clad danzantes comes to a pause within a ring of white flowers. The rattle of the ayoyotes around their ankles fall silent as the ceremonial leader begins to speak.

Jack Tumidajski came to Guadalajara in 1972. He spoke no Spanish and knew almost nothing about the area. He just knew Mexico represented independence, freedom and a great chance to meet some dark-eyed “señoritas.” Do you think you’ve heard this story before? Not from this perspective. In his book, “Quadalajara: the utopia that once was,” Tumidajski lovingly relates the story of one of the city’s earliest gringo communities: wheelchair-bound quadruplegic and paraplegic war veterans, accident victims and degenerative disease patients.

The huipil, a loose-fitting tunic derived from the Nahuatl word huipilli (“decorated dress or blouse”), is one of the most emblematic garments of traditional clothing in Mexico. Its history stretches back more than a thousand years to the pre-Columbian era, where it was worn by indigenous women across Mesoamerica, from the Teotihuacana and Mexica to the Maya cultures.

The story of the Avendaño family has many elements of a good fairy tale: difficult journeys, arduous work, beauty, creatures that produce a substance more valuable than gold, threatening villains and rescuers.