The Dragons of the Queen

Two unpleasant American tourists in Mexico find their attitudes greatly changed when their car breaks down and they are forced to spend the night in the crumbling hacienda of a one-hundred-and-two-year-old "queen."

Kirkus Review: "The queen was not a real queen and the dragons were not real dragons." But Mr. and Mrs. George Kenilworth "from just outside Boise, Idaho" are presented as real-life tourists: ignoramuses abroad. From deprecating the small Mexican town and resenting their unplanned overnight stay, they are transformed--overnight--into reserved, respectful admirers of the milieu. "Something magical and mysterious" has happened to them through dining with queen-by-consent Dona Pascuala in the candlelight of her crumbling hacienda. It's good fortune too for the only one of her "dragons" (dogs) nobody wants the next day after she's died: Harald, an unpedigreed, unprepossessing hound, is adopted by the Kenilworths who take him back to their town outside Boise. Where they live more happily ever after.