Books - September 2009
Plus: Read the full interview with Featured Author Carol Meyer
Reviewed This Month:• The Naked Rainbow and Other Stories |
Guest Review by Patricia West-Barker
Fiction
The Naked Rainbow and Other Stories: El arco iris desnudo y Otros Cuentos
By Nasario Garía
UNM Press
240 pages, paperback, $18.95
In several of his previous nonfiction works—including Brujerias: Stories
of Witchcraft and the Super-natural in the American Southwest and Beyond—author Nasario García has captured cultural elements of his native northern New Mexico. The Naked Rainbow and Other Stories is fictional, but may be based on people he’s known while living in the Río Puerco Valley in northwestern New Mexico—an area of small villages and rich traditions described by García in gentle, detailed strokes throughout the nine stories comprising this all-too-brief bilingual collection.
García excels at the short story form, capturing his compelling characters in brief vignettes. In “A Naughty Little Boy,” Juanito learns about honesty after an encounter with a witch. In “Dona Predicanda,” a lively, fun-loving elder 
with a diablo-may-care spirit teaches herself to “drive” after winning a beat-up pickup truck in a raffle. In one of the most interesting tales, “Don José María”, we meet a man who has recently left this earthly plane and has little good to say about those he’s left behind. “The Stranger” highlights the qualities of generosity, forgiveness, and honesty when an unusual but slightly familiar face returns to pay his debts to friends at the village cantina.
And we get an eyeful in “The Girl with Three Breasts” when the young lady in question, the bright but shy Antonita, whose unique physical condition keeps the small-town gossips busy all day, marries a man who’s just returned home after years of living the highlife elsewhere. Together they discover the quiet power of family, and overcome the challenge of raising triplets.
García’s wise inclusion of a glossary of idiomatic expressions at the back of the book will help those unfamiliar with northern New Mexico Spanish, whose definitions of some words are often different from those of other Spanish dialects. For those who long to know more about the fables and distinctive residents of folklore-steeped northern New Mexico, El arco iris desnudo y Otros Cuentos is a terrific place to start.
Jeff Berg enjoys reading at his home in the desert in Las Cruces.
Book Briefs by Ashley M. Biggers
History
Images of America: Ruidoso and Ruidoso Downs
By Lyn Kidder and Herb Brunell
Arcadia Publishing
128 pages, paperback, $21.99
Known primarily as a place in the cool Sacramento Mountains to escape the summer heat and as a winter skiing getaway, the town of Ruidoso has a rich history, and this recent title in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series captures it well. Like all books in the series, this one is devoted to historic photos of the area, and includes more than 200 of them. As noted in the extended captions accompanying the images, in the past two centuries the area has been home to the Mescalero Apaches, Buffalo Soldiers from nearby Fort Stanton, Billy the Kid, outdoorsmen, businesspeople, and gambling enthusiasts (before and after gambling was legalized) who placed their bets at what is now Ruidoso Downs racetrack. (Read more in “The Dash for Cash,” page 46.) Authors Lyn Kidder and Herb Brunell both live in Ruidoso. A set of 15 postcards featuring historic images from Ruidoso and Ruidoso Downs is also available ($7.99).
Memoir
Life on the Rocks: One Woman's Adventures in Petroglyph Preservation
By Katherine Wells
University of New Mexico Press
224 pages, paperback, $21.95
Though clever, this book’s title doesn’t do it justice. I opened Life on the Rocks expecting a preservationist’s impassioned plea to protect the Ancestral Puebloan markings that dot New Mexico’s landscapes and documentation of the grassroots struggle to do so. I found all that, but I also found so much more.
Author Katherine Wells delivers a lively, intelligent memoir that begins when she deserts her California home to forge a new life in New Mexico. The petroglyphs on her newly purchased property on Mesa Prieta, north of Santa Fe, beckon her here: “New Mexico spoke the idiom of my soul.” She describes her struggles of building a straw-bale home, her relationship challenges with her partner, Lloyd, how his battle with cancer brought their connection into focus, and her emergence as a mixed-media artist whose work often celebrates the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Wells’s devotion to preserving the numerous petroglyphs she finds on her land and in the surrounding area runs throughout the book, whose final chapters are devoted almost exclusively to the Vecinos del Río group’s efforts to prevent roadway construction and mining from damaging these irreplaceable artifacts. Though battle-weary from her decade-long struggle to protect the petroglyphs, Wells concludes that “The view from my kitchen window each day, each season, is a pure blessing. The land is my hard-won refuge. Beloved, boulder-strewn home.” This book is a pure pleasure to read.
Nine GatesBy Jane Lindskold
Tor Books
400 pages, hardcover, $24.99
In this sequel to Thirteen Orphans (Tor Books, 2008), Albuquerque-based author Jane Lindskold once again draws us into her fantastical world based on Chinese zodiacal lore. The book opens with a bang—the Thirteen Orphans are under attack and must defend themselves with mah-jong charms and ch’i—and hardly lets up as protagonist Brenda Morris tries to harness her newfound powers to protect her allies and construct the Nine Gates, which will return the world to order. I recommend beginning with Thirteen Orphans before diving into the sequel—Lindskold propels this action-packed book with only cursory introductions to the characters’ relationships and the zodiacal legends that guide them. Lindskold has a no nonsense tone; though she’s a fantasy writer, she roots her fiction in reality—from factual elements of Chinese culture to her urban setting—to create an enthralling and escapist fantasy realm. Fans of the
genre and her series, Firekeeper, will enjoy Nine Gates.
Environment
Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat
By Jack Loeffler
Museum of New Mexico Press
175 pages, hardcover, $34.95
It is sometimes said that there are two sides to every story—and then there’s the truth. In Healing the West, Jack Loeffler weaves multiple viewpoints into a tapestry with which he hopes to resolve the seemingly mutually exclusive beliefs that “land is sacred” and “land is for profit.” In Loeffler’s consideration of these conflicting viewpoints, a higher truth about the relationship of residents of the American Southwest begins to emerge.
The book is in two sections: “The Spirit of Place” focuses on the relationships of indigenous cultures to the land, and “Moving Waters: The Colorado River and the West” explores how that river has affected the region’s development. I found particularly enlightening the entries by indigenous storytellers, such as Acoma Pueblo potter Dolores Lewis and Santa Clara Pueblo historian Rina Swentzell. Healing the West also includes the voices of writer and environmentalist William deBuys, author of the New Mexico classic River of Traps, and former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, among others. A radio producer and ethnomusicologist by trade, Loeffler recorded many of these interviews, some of which are included on an accompanying CD. He is also the author of Survival Along the Continental Divide: An Anthology of Interviews, and founded the Black Mesa Defense Fund, which organized the Hopi Indians of Arizona in opposition to Peabody Coal. Students of the environment and of the history of land development will enjoy Healing the West.
History
Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City, Revised and Expanded Edition
Edited by David Grant Nobel
School for Advanced Research Press
144 pages, paperback, $19.95
Books on the history of the City Different abound, and this is one of the most accessible I’ve seen. This revised edition, published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the city’s founding, features chapters written by some of the state’s leading historical experts, including John L. Kessell, Frances Levine, and Marc Simmons. In chapters that will appeal more to the general reader than to the history buff, the writers relate Santa Fe’s history, beginning with the Paleo-Indian hunters who first roamed the region, and concluding sometime in the first half of the 20th century. They cover topics from the Santa Fe Trail, to the importance of access to irrigation water, to the city’s identity. This edition is a must-read for Santa
Feans and Santa Fans alike.
The West of the Imagination: Second EditionBy William H. Goetzmann and William N. Goetzmann
University of Oklahoma Press
604 pages, hardcover, $65
Moving beyond the works of such icons of Western art as Georgia O’Keeffe, in this collection the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian William H. Goetzmann and his son, the art-finance expert William N. Goetzmann, collect and comment on works that capture the West’s mythical power. “Tracing the stories and analyzing the works of the artists and photographers and other image-makers who portrayed the West, we hope to point up the elemental power of their visions, their magic, and the ways in which they contributed to what might be called ‘the tale of the American tribe’,” they write in the introduction. From sketches by early explorers to the modern earth sculptures of Michael Heizer, this beautiful book embraces the breadth of Western art and boasts more than 450 images. Although some New Mexico works are included, the book’s strength is its broad, multifaceted view, which takes in works both historic and modern. The West of the Imagination was originally published as a companion to the popular PBS series of that title.
El Rancho de Las Golondrinas: Living History in New Mexico's La Ciénega ValleyBy Carmella Padilla, Photographys by Jack Parsons, Foreword by Marc Simmons
Museum of New Mexico Press
207 pages, hardcover, $39.95
Each fall, El Rancho de Las Golondrinas Living History Museum beckons visitors and locals alike to relive the past through its adobe structures and pastoralm grounds in La Ciénega, just south of Santa Fe.
In often-lyrical language that befits the ranch’s beauty, author Carmella Padilla reminds us, “From its ancient countryside and venerable rituals to its architectural medley and ever-changing seasons, El Rancho de las Golondrinas is a timeless reminder that history is never really past. Here, as everywhere, the past flows continually forward, in the rustle of ancient cottonwoods and the slow release of the acequia, in the creaky whispers of well-worn buildings and the swallow’s prolonged twitter. In this magical marshland, we too are timeless. It is 2009 and it is 1709. It is centuries of springtime and generations of processions. It is then and it is now.”
First, Padilla retells the history of the northern New Mexico valley that led to the types of buildings and cultural practices visitors can experience today at the Ranch of the Swallows, then traces the lives and legacy of Y. A. and Leonora Curtin Paloheimo, preservationists who planted the seed that grew into today’s living-history museum. Finally, Padilla celebrates the ranch as a place to preserve Spanish colonial heritage. Among the book’s 200 images are historic photos of the ranch’s past residents, stunning images of the grounds today, and portraits of the dedicated volunteers who bring the museum to life. El Rancho de Las Golondrinas is a must-have for any New Mexiphile’s collection. Journalist and author Carmella Padilla, who lives in La Ciénega, won the 2009 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Literary Arts, and photographer Jack Parsons has been documenting the museum since it opened in 1972. For more information about the Ranch of the Swallows, see www.golondrinas.org.
