"When Nicolas Herrera was a boy he told his second grade teacher that he wanted to be a bank robber. When he was a little older he loved "Playing Chicken" with his cousins and sneaking down to the river to watch the hippie girls swimming nude. He also loved to make art, in his family's tradition. But school was always hard. Nick found reading difficult, he wasn't allowed to speak Spanish and he often got into trouble. When he was thirteen he started smoking marijuana, and in his later teen years he began to drink and party and drive fast cars. Everything changed the day Nicholas, who was driving while drunk, had a head-on crash with a truck. He lay in a coma for weeks, and his doctors thought he would die. But somehow he survived, and he hasn't touched alcohol or drugs since. "El arte me salvó la vida," he says. Art saved his life. This book is Nicholas's amazing story, as told to Elisa Amado. Nicholas tells the unvarnished truth about his early wild years, and how he left his wild life behind. He has created art about his own experiences- being tempted by drugs and alcohol, the accident, being in trouble with the police- but also about 9/11, the Gulf War and environmental issues. And in his family's tradition, he continues to make paintings and sculptures of saints and scenes from the Bible, but with his own modern twist. He has become one of the most important folk artists in the United States."--P. 2 of cover.