Puerto Vallarta Squeeze
Encyclopedia
Puerto Vallarta Squeeze is a novel
by Robert James Waller
, which was made into a film in 2004. Originally published in 1995 and subtitled The Run for el Norte, this unlikely romance
follows an American
expatriate
and his Mexican
girlfriend on a road trip with a former Marine. The title itself may refer to one of the main characters (see third paragraph) or the race-against-time journey that they take, which begins in Puerto Vallarta.
Danny Pastor has relaxed in Puerto Vallarta
over the past year with María de la Luz Santos, a 22-year-old woman whom he'd first met as a cantina
waitress. They moved in together shortly thereafter, and Luz asked Danny to marry her, but he kept her at arms' length. One night when Luz went off by herself, she got pregnant
by a drunken college
student. Danny paid for her to have an abortion
, and that incident made up his mind about her.
One night as they relaxed in the El Niño cantina, Danny heard a gunshot and rushes outside to see two men dead. One was an American Navy
officer, and the other was a software engineer
ready to sell his company's work on failure analysis to the Taiwan
ese government.
Back at their apartment, Danny and Luz met a man who identifies himself as "Peter Schumann" and needs to get north of the Rio Grande
quickly. Paying Danny five thousand in cash, Schumann arranges his passage in a rusting Ford Bronco
named Vito. The film adaptation featured a Jeep Wagoneer
instead of a Ford Bronco.
Unaware at first of the nature of their journey, Luz wants to go with them to see her grandparents' graves along the coast. When she met with them for the trip, Luz wore blue jeans
and a shirt that read "Puerto Vallarta Squeeze" with two halves of a lime
dripping down the center. Danny saw in the story of this trip a great opportunity for a literary comeback. As they travelled north, Danny, Luz, and Schumann evade American military and Mexican authorities. Schumann later revealed that he's really former Marine
sniper
turned mercenary
Clayton Price; he was commissioned to kill the engineer, but he took his job personally when he shot the naval officer. During the Vietnam War
, Price was abandoned behind enemy lines by the officer who commanded the helicopter
.
After commandeering the backroads of rural Mexico, Price arranged to have a helicopter meet him near an abandoned silver
mine at Zapata. After a fiesta the night before, Luz decided to go with Price because she's fallen in love with him. As Price put it, "I'm not sure I'm capable of loving at all. But, Danny, you love too timidly. I'm not sure which is worse. You have this offhand way of treating her most of the time, as if she's a partially reformed street whore. . . . She told me about her past. She says I treat her with respect. You figure it out."
In a standoff with authorities, Price and Luz are killed. Danny heads back to Puerto Vallarta through Mazatlán
, but he's arrested when the gun Price used in the double murder is found behind his apartment's toilet
. Despite the evidence
being circumstantial
, Danny serves seventeen months of a ten-year prison sentence before he's released with a one-way ticket to Laredo
. Although ordered never to return to Mexico again, Danny does so to find Price and Luz's graves in the Zapata cemetery
. Price's marker was removed, but Danny exhumed Luz's coffin and reburied it in Celaya
, where her grandparents were buried. During his time in prison, Danny wrote a manuscript about his adventures with Price and Luz as they rode north, but he never saw it again.
Characters from Waller's other novels make cameos
in Puerto Vallarta Squeeze. When Luz flashes back to her childhood in Ceylaya, a gringo
photographer bearing a strong resemblance to Robert Kincaid from The Bridges of Madison County
takes photos of her working in the fields and sends her a copy of one. When Danny, Luz, and Price arrive in Zapata, Price gets a drink from the bar and barely recognizes another Marine. When the Marine goes off with his partner, he's referred to as "Jack" and is told to stop pining over "Linda". Carmine Jack and Linda Lobo are two prominent characters from Waller's novel Border Music.
Much of the background information of the character Price come from the real life Vietnam Era Marine Sniper Carlos Hathcock
, whose legendary career in Vietnam has been the basis for 4 non-fiction novels. Several of Price's stories, told first hand, seem to come directly from Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills by Charles W. Henderson.
, it was directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman
, and starred Harvey Keitel
, Scott Glenn
, and Jonathan Brandis
(in his last role before his death in 2003). Vikki Carr
also appears and sings in Spanish.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Robert James Waller
Robert James Waller
Robert James Waller is an American author, also known for his work as a photographer and musician.-Life:Waller received his B.A. and M.A. from University of Northern Iowa . He received his Ph.D...
, which was made into a film in 2004. Originally published in 1995 and subtitled The Run for el Norte, this unlikely romance
Romance novel
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...
follows an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
and his Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....
girlfriend on a road trip with a former Marine. The title itself may refer to one of the main characters (see third paragraph) or the race-against-time journey that they take, which begins in Puerto Vallarta.
Plot summary
Former journalistJournalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
Danny Pastor has relaxed in Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta is a Mexican balneario resort city situated on the Pacific Ocean's Bahía de Banderas.The 2010 census reported Puerto Vallarta's population as 255,725 making it the sixth-largest city in the state of Jalisco...
over the past year with María de la Luz Santos, a 22-year-old woman whom he'd first met as a cantina
Cantina
Cantina is a word that can refer to various places and establishments. It is similar in etymology to "canteen", and is derived from the Italian word for a cellar, winery, or vault.Cantinas are found in many towns of Italy...
waitress. They moved in together shortly thereafter, and Luz asked Danny to marry her, but he kept her at arms' length. One night when Luz went off by herself, she got pregnant
Pregnancy
Pregnancy refers to the fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, in a woman's uterus. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets...
by a drunken college
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
student. Danny paid for her to have an abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
, and that incident made up his mind about her.
One night as they relaxed in the El Niño cantina, Danny heard a gunshot and rushes outside to see two men dead. One was an American Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
officer, and the other was a software engineer
Software engineer
A software engineer is an engineer who applies the principles of software engineering to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that make computers or anything containing software, such as computer chips, work.- Overview :...
ready to sell his company's work on failure analysis to the Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
ese government.
Back at their apartment, Danny and Luz met a man who identifies himself as "Peter Schumann" and needs to get north of the Rio Grande
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...
quickly. Paying Danny five thousand in cash, Schumann arranges his passage in a rusting Ford Bronco
Ford Bronco
The Ford Bronco is a sport utility vehicle that was produced from 1966 to 1996, with five distinct generations. Broncos can be divided into two categories: early Broncos and full-size Broncos ....
named Vito. The film adaptation featured a Jeep Wagoneer
Jeep Wagoneer
The Jeep Wagoneer was an early sport utility vehicle and the first luxury 4x4, produced under varying marques from 1963 to 1991. It was noteworthy for being in production for more than 28 years with only minor mechanical changes...
instead of a Ford Bronco.
Unaware at first of the nature of their journey, Luz wants to go with them to see her grandparents' graves along the coast. When she met with them for the trip, Luz wore blue jeans
Blue Jeans
"Blue Jeans" is a sentimental popular song written by Harry D. Kerr and Lou Traveller in 1920. In the song, the singer is reminiscing about a long-ago young love that happened somewhere in the "hills of the old Cumberland." The chorus echoes the singer's longing:* The Parlor Songs Collection.* by...
and a shirt that read "Puerto Vallarta Squeeze" with two halves of a lime
Lime (fruit)
Lime is a term referring to a number of different citrus fruits, both species and hybrids, which are typically round, green to yellow in color, 3–6 cm in diameter, and containing sour and acidic pulp. Limes are a good source of vitamin C. Limes are often used to accent the flavors of foods and...
dripping down the center. Danny saw in the story of this trip a great opportunity for a literary comeback. As they travelled north, Danny, Luz, and Schumann evade American military and Mexican authorities. Schumann later revealed that he's really former Marine
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....
turned mercenary
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
Clayton Price; he was commissioned to kill the engineer, but he took his job personally when he shot the naval officer. During the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, Price was abandoned behind enemy lines by the officer who commanded the helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
.
After commandeering the backroads of rural Mexico, Price arranged to have a helicopter meet him near an abandoned silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
mine at Zapata. After a fiesta the night before, Luz decided to go with Price because she's fallen in love with him. As Price put it, "I'm not sure I'm capable of loving at all. But, Danny, you love too timidly. I'm not sure which is worse. You have this offhand way of treating her most of the time, as if she's a partially reformed street whore. . . . She told me about her past. She says I treat her with respect. You figure it out."
In a standoff with authorities, Price and Luz are killed. Danny heads back to Puerto Vallarta through Mazatlán
Mazatlán
Mazatlán is a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa; the surrounding municipio for which the city serves as the municipal seat is Mazatlán Municipality. It is located at on the Pacific coast, across from the southernmost tip of the Baja California peninsula.Mazatlán is a Nahuatl word meaning...
, but he's arrested when the gun Price used in the double murder is found behind his apartment's toilet
Toilet
A toilet is a sanitation fixture used primarily for the disposal of human excrement, often found in a small room referred to as a toilet/bathroom/lavatory...
. Despite the evidence
Evidence
Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
being circumstantial
Circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime...
, Danny serves seventeen months of a ten-year prison sentence before he's released with a one-way ticket to Laredo
Laredo, Texas
Laredo is the county seat of Webb County, Texas, United States, located on the north bank of the Rio Grande in South Texas, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. According to the 2010 census, the city population was 236,091 making it the 3rd largest on the United States-Mexican border,...
. Although ordered never to return to Mexico again, Danny does so to find Price and Luz's graves in the Zapata cemetery
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
. Price's marker was removed, but Danny exhumed Luz's coffin and reburied it in Celaya
Celaya
Celaya is a city and its surrounding municipality in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, located in the southeast quadrant of the state. It is the third most populous city in the state, with a 2005 census population of 310,413. The municipality for which the city serves as municipal seat, had a...
, where her grandparents were buried. During his time in prison, Danny wrote a manuscript about his adventures with Price and Luz as they rode north, but he never saw it again.
Characters
- Clayton Price
- Walter McGrane
- Danny Pastor
- Maria de la Luz Santos
- Agent Neil Weatherford
Miscellaneous
As an acknowledgment, the author claims he first heard this story from his wife, who heard it in Puerto Vallarta.Characters from Waller's other novels make cameos
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
in Puerto Vallarta Squeeze. When Luz flashes back to her childhood in Ceylaya, a gringo
Gringo
Gringo is a slang Spanish and Portuguese word used in Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries in Latin America, to denote foreigners, often from the United States. The term can be applied to someone who is actually a foreigner, or it can denote a strong association or assimilation into...
photographer bearing a strong resemblance to Robert Kincaid from The Bridges of Madison County
The Bridges of Madison County
The Bridges of Madison County is a 1992 best-selling novel by Robert James Waller which tells the story of a married but lonely Italian woman, living in 1960s Madison County, Iowa, who engages in an affair with a National Geographic photographer from Bellingham, Washington who is visiting Madison...
takes photos of her working in the fields and sends her a copy of one. When Danny, Luz, and Price arrive in Zapata, Price gets a drink from the bar and barely recognizes another Marine. When the Marine goes off with his partner, he's referred to as "Jack" and is told to stop pining over "Linda". Carmine Jack and Linda Lobo are two prominent characters from Waller's novel Border Music.
Much of the background information of the character Price come from the real life Vietnam Era Marine Sniper Carlos Hathcock
Carlos Hathcock
Carlos Hathcock was a United States Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant sniper with a service record of 93 confirmed kills. Hathcock's record and the extraordinary details of the missions he undertook made him a legend in the Marine Corps...
, whose legendary career in Vietnam has been the basis for 4 non-fiction novels. Several of Price's stories, told first hand, seem to come directly from Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills by Charles W. Henderson.
Adaptations
In 2003, "Puerto Vallarta Squeeze" was made into a motion picture. Adapted for the screen by Richard AlfieriRichard Alfieri
Richard Alfieri is a multi-award winning playwright, screenplay writer, novelist, producer and actor.A graduate of Yale University, Mr. Alfieri began his professional career in New York City, where he studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse...
, it was directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Arthur Allan Seidelman is an award-winning American television, film, and theatre director and an occasional writer, producer and actor.Born in New York City, he received his BA from Whittier College and an MA in Theatre from UCLA. He subsequently studied with Sanford Meisner, who became a...
, and starred Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
, Scott Glenn
Scott Glenn
Theodore Scott Glenn is an American actor. His roles have included Wes Hightower in Urban Cowboy , astronaut Alan Shepard in The Right Stuff ,Emmett in Silverado , Commander Bart Mancuso in The Hunt for Red October , Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs and The Wise Man in Sucker Punch -Early...
, and Jonathan Brandis
Jonathan Brandis
Jonathan Gregory Brandis was an American actor, director, and screenwriter.-Early life and career:Brandis was born in Danbury, Connecticut, the only child of Mary, a teacher and personal manager, and Gregory Brandis, a food distributor and firefighter. He began his career as a child model and...
(in his last role before his death in 2003). Vikki Carr
Vikki Carr
Vikki Carr is an American singer and humanitarian from El Paso, Texas. She has performed in a variety of music genres, including jazz, pop and country, but has enjoyed her greatest success singing in Spanish.-Career:After taking the stage name 'Vikki Carr', she signed with Liberty Records in 1962...
also appears and sings in Spanish.