A few years ago Shawn Shiflett went back to Puerto Escondido, the gritty Mexican beach town where he spent some time in the 70s. He was doing research for his new novel, Hidden Place, and wanted to make sure he had the lay of the land right. Back then the place was often referred to as the next Acapulco, a coastal refuge for traveling college kids and other ne’er-do-wells. Twenty-five years later, where once a single dirt road wound its way down to the beach from the campsite where hippies used to hang out, there were now paved roads, hotels, and shops. Some things, however, hadn’t changed. “I stayed in the nicest hotel in town, which was about 50 bucks a night,” Shiflett says. “There was a message on your bathroom door: ‘Do not go out at night,’ it said. ‘We’re sorry. Our police are corrupt. They will not protect you.’ I said, ‘Oh, I got that right.’”
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Set in 1976, Hidden Place (published in January by Akashic Books) elucidates the inevitable conflict between bliss-seeking tourists and the indigenous population of their adopted utopia. Narrator-protagonist Roman Pearson is an awkward but brave beatnik trying to keep his relationship with his girlfriend alive. His mission takes the couple from their Chicago apartment to a vacation in predevelopment Escondido, where they meet Jay, an Oklahoma shitkicker with an alarming propensity for random acts of alcoholic violence. After Jay torches a local cabana, killing a little girl in the process, tourists and locals are swept up in a deadly spiral of violence. It’s fiction, but some of it’s based on fact: shortly after his most recent trip to Mexico, Shiflett met another writer at a conference whose friend had been raped and killed on the Escondido beach late at night.
After years of back and forth, Shiflett was getting frustrated. The agency had gotten huge, and he was, in his own words, “small potatoes.” One day five years ago, he came home from the doctor to find an e-mail saying he’d been dropped by the agency. He says he wasn’t that upset: “I just took that as a sign that this wasn’t a good fit.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Dorothy Perry.
