The Wizard of the Blue Hole: The Adventures of Noldo

JOIN NOLDO IN HIS LATEST ADVENTUREThe Wizard of the Blue Hole is the latest adventure in the magical life of Noldo Rodriguez, the boy you met in the four-part award-winning series, The Adventures of Noldo, in which he travels back in time to key moments in Tejano history. Now our hero, Noldo, is not only older, but bolder. In The Wizard of the Blue Hole, he teams up with a powerful barrio healer and his clever niece to contend against a curandero who has turned bad-to avenge an old grudge and to seize control of the city by capturing its source of water, the San Antonio River itself. We learn of his daring-do against demonic odds, which takes him into a magical place that lies under the streets of San Antonio, Texas. In the battle against the evil Fausto, Noldo claims a magical power that has come down to him from his elders, healers and wizards for generations past. First, the barrio healer is attacked, then a guardian of the Blue Hole is the target of Fausto’s anger, but the final duel takes place as the barrio warriors enter through the secret entrance to the aquifer, the very source of the City’s life, its water, to wage a battle to the death.

Armando Rendón is a native of San Antonio, Texas, who grew up in its West Side barrio during the 1940s in the house built by his grandfather, a full-blooded Kickapoo Indian, and was raised by his grandmother, who was Coahuiltecan from the state of Coahuila, Méjico. Though he only spent the first ten years of his life there, all the memories, the values, the traditions and the people around him stayed with him and make up the foundation of his Noldo stories, His education includes a BA in English from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, a Masters from the Antioch Graduate School of Education, and a Juris Doctor from The American University Law School in Washington, D.C. He authored Chicano Manifesto (1971, Macmillan; 1996, Armando Rendón) chronicling the Chicano Movement, the first book about Chicanos by a Chicano, and after retiring from a career in public affairs in 2004, turned to writing for himself, penned a chapbook of poetry, Up to Earth in 2013 and wrote the four-part series, The Adventures of Noldo and his Magical Scooter (2013-16). The Wizard of the Blue Hole is his fifth Noldo novel. In November 2009, he launched Somos en escrito The Latino Literary Online Magazine - www.somosenescrito.com - to publish and promote the spread of Chicano and Latino literature. He can be reached at somossubmissions@gmail.com. He now lives near Berkeley, California.