Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Chester Seltzer, who is best known as a writer under the name Amado Muro, was the son of Louis B. Seltzer and the grandson of author Charles Alden Seltzer. His father was the editor of the Cleveland Press and an influential journalist who was a guest in the White House of every president from Woodrow Wilson to Lyndon Johnson. Charles Alden Seltzer wrote forty-nine novels with romanticized western themes, including some that were made into motion pictures with such stars as William S. Hart.

Chester Seltzer rode freight trains, was a farm worker, went to sea, lived on skid rows, sometimes worked on newspapers, and, from age twenty until his death, he wrote short stories--perhaps among the best of their kind--about men on the road, in the fields, at the missions, and in the villages of Mexico. His stories talk about such things as...