The Man Who Sued the Governor

About the Book

"The Man Who Sued the Governor" is the featured introduction to a collection of short stories told by Jim Curry, a 70-year native from the high country in northern New Mexico. Some of his stories are true personal experiences, some are nearly true, and he says the rest ought to be true. It is hard to tell where the truth ends and fiction begins. There is both humor and tragedy, sometimes side by side. There is an immigrant you wish could stay, and one who behaved badly. Prospectors, governors, doctors, lawyers, hustlers, farmers, simple folk and complicated people, all tell their tales in a distinctly multi-cultural setting. He spent a third of his life in New Mexico schools, and at least ten years just wandering. Mr. Curry claims famed New Mexico writers Mary Austin and Tony Hillerman as major influences, but he has a distinctive voice of his own. You will want to hear more of his stories, but be patient: he has two more books nearly done, and is still working away.

About the Author

James M. Curry was born in Santa Fe in 1941 and grew up in the high country in rural northern New Mexico, where his great-grandfather first settled in the 1880's. He has been a magazine salesman, a route truck driver, a schoolteacher, a telephone solicitor, and a bank clerk. He spent years in bill collecting, repossession work, and process serving, and didn't finish college until he was 37. He was a lawyer for 15 years, but in the 1990's he lost everything, and was put on probation for writing bad checks in 1999, which the government waited until 2009 to charge as bank fraud. He did a few months in jail, despite having done nothing bad in this millennium. With that blot on his record, he makes his living doing legal writing and research for lawyers, and doesn't spend as much time in the casinos as he used to.