AMEND, DALE
AMEND, DALE
A Duck Looking for Hunters
Book Surge
ISBN 978-1-4392-3561-4
The autobiographical story of a Forward Air Controller (FAC) pilot during the Vietnam War, reprised from his daily letters home to his wife. With warmth, insight, a phenomenal memory for detail, and a great writing talent, Lt. Col. Amend tells us what it was like for these men who confronted their mortality each day as they sought out the enemy and led the bombers in to find their quarry.These were not the draft card burners. These were the men who did the work their country demanded of them, many of whom returned in body bags or maimed and broken.
Amend does not gloss over the horrors of that war, but tells it as he lived it, mixing in a keen wit and a wry sense of humor, framing for the reader pictures of the days of these men who daily faced the very definite possibility of death as they went about their duties under enemy guns.
In the midst of the danger, lack of extracurricular activities, and homesickness, however, they also found something to laugh at, something to joke about, and something to occupy their down time. There were wagers made on the outcome of their on-going battles with the rats that plagued their living quarters. Incompetent and unloved officers who harassed the men and put them in unnecessary danger were the butt of their disparaging jokes. Tennis matches that kept them in shape when they weren’t flying and singing groups that fed their need for spiritual revivification helped them contend with the loneliness and foreignness that haunted them. For Amend, a profound faith and love of family sustained him through it all.
With knowledge and memories given only to those who lived it, Amend shares his memories of a year in the Vietnam War which should be required reading for teachers of American history, as well as any American who wants to know how our servicemen felt and worked through their obligations during that time.
Educational, entertaining, uplifting, written with uncommon authorship and excellently edited, this book needs to be a national best-seller.
10/09 Reviewed by Lola R. Eagle, free-lance writer and author of The Music of Her Life
ANAYA, RUDOLFO
The Essays
University of Oklahoma PressISBN 978-0-8061-4023-0
WINNER 2010 New Mexico Book Awards
What can a reviewer say about one of New Mexico’s best-known authors, except that it’s an honor to read his thoughts.
This compilation of Anaya’s essays, some formerly published, speaks on many topics – censorship, the Chicano movement, Spanish land grants, libraries, his family ties, and how he came to write his novels.
His essay on libraries spoke volumes to me, a voracious reader from the age of five.
Although the culture I grew up in was very different, I could relate to the tales of his grandfather, as I had similar experiences with my own. In writing of the Atrisco Land Grant, he said its sale hurt him because “allegiance to the land is as important as allegiance to family and to God.” I could hear my own grandfather saying he hadn’t much to leave his heirs, but he had a little piece of land for them.
He has a lot to share about the Chicano movement which, he says, created a cultural nationalist consciousness that brought together the community. “This after all is the challenge of our generation, to create a consciousness which fosters the flowering of the human spirit, not its exploitation.”
As readers, we feel the shame for those persons who censored and burned his novel Bless Me, Ultima when it was published. He reveals his feelings on that subject in his essay “Stand Up Against Censorship Anywhere It Occurs.”
Fans of Anaya will be eager to read this collection of writings by a favorite author.
Reviewed 5/10 by Lola R. Eagle, author, free-lance writer, and poet
AWALT, JANE KRIETE
The Stranger Comes At Sundown
$17.95 PB, $32.95 HB
FINALIST 2008 NEW MEXICO BOOK AWARDS
(All profits from this book are being donated to the
For most of the last two years of her husband’s fifteen-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, Awalt kept a journal. As a primary caregiver, she brings the reader into her concerns: Will he wander away from the apartment during the night? Will he manage to reach the toilet or will she have another major cleanup chore? Will she be able to get him back into his bed when he falls out? Over and over, she gives thanks for the washer and dryer in the apartment. Over and over we hear about that Stranger who comes, frequently at sundown, to take over her husband’s personality, a Stranger who begins to act out violently.
During the final three months, when she knows she can no longer continue to care for him herself, Awalt goes daily to spend hours with him at the Medical Center. This part of her journal kept me turning page after page to see what would happen next. Written for other caregivers, Awalt makes her case clear for better communication between doctor and family members. She spells out flags to watch for in other Parkinson’s patients. One wonders what her husband’s last days would have been like without her presence in the Medical Center, in spite of the good care and extremely high costs of his treatment.
This reviewer wished for better editing. The occasional wrong word should have been corrected. Several unclear passages might have been reworked. Some of the repetitiveness could have been eased. But for all that, an insightful read.
9/08 Reviewed by Kate Harrington, writer
BUCHER, ISABEL BEARMAN
Nonno’s Monkey: An American Memoir
Cantare Press, ISBN: 978-0-615-20439-0
This charming book starts off slowly as the family genealogy is established. It’s worth getting through because when the storytelling begins, you’re in for a delightful ride. Told from the view of young Isabel Miller, the stories are funny, sad, everyday, and extraordinary in this view of an extended American family is told.
There’s Nonno and Nonna, emigrants from the “old country”, fiercely Italian and planning on keeping their family that way in 1930’s and forward “Hamerica”. Daughter Maria married non-Italiano, George Fisk Miller, and from that union came Isabel Miller, the storyteller of this book.
Nonno’s Monkey is a picture of another time and place when extended family was the norm and the Italian (or Irish or German) was equally as important as the –American that followed the nationality. These people were fiercely American while holding on to where they had come from.
The thread tying together many of these stories is, Chico, the monkey that Nonno won in a singing contest. Nonna was incapable of turning away an animal in need and, thus, Chico became a fixture in the life of Isabel and her brother, David.
Far from angelic, Chico was tremendously smart. He had a way of working things through until he got what he wanted, be it eggs fresh from the chicken or opening the tap to the “vino”.
Isabel’s family is the kind you might wish you had been born into and her book opens the door to everyday life in a different place and time; a place where Sunday’s meant starched white dresses and staying clean or weekdays when a stick horse could been your boon companion…and a way to taunt your little brother.
This is a recommended read to slow down the pace of your own frantic life for a short time. Enjoy it.
9/09 Reviewed by Sabra Brown Steinsiek, author of Timing Is Everything
BELL, CHARLES GREENLEAF
Millenial Harvest
Lumen Books, ISBN 978-0-930829-60-5
$25.00
Bell’s mind seems to have naturally formed his every thought into poetic offerings, and it seems he wrote them all down. Poets tend to think that way but with many of us they flit through our minds and are gone. Not so, apparently, with Bell.
To get the most from this book, it must be read slowly, savored, unlike a novel that one can skim and yet come away with a feel for the whole.
A thick book of almost six hundred pages, Bell’s autobiography is interspersed with his poems and his comments about them. Several smaller books could be made from this one book. I’d like to take it on a year’s vacation and read and savor some every day.
Poetry subjects range through politics, democracy, war, love, passion – all subjects under the sun. Some lines from a number of his poems are so lovely they cleave to my mind: –
“…..The property of spirit is transcendence..…”
“…..Tall, crisp, against the cloud, the swaying pine on the whistling tuft of the hill…..”
“…..Then down to night the brief sun plunging/Draws the curtain…”
“…..While from all sides breathes the transcendal mourning of the doves….”
“…..Sleep sings the remembered beauty daylight mars…..”
A product of academia, Bell’s early poems are often incomprehensible to me, being based on Latin or Greek classical tales; others are very dark, and seem lost in the depths of his very soul.
The stories he relates of his life as he grew from one phase of writing to another make an interesting journey. The back cover says it best: “A monumental autobiography with interwoven collected poems by the maverick polymath, poet, novelist, physicist, translator and teacher, as well as creator of the epic Symbolic History: Through Sight and Sound.
5/ 2009 Review by Lola R. Eagle, author of From The Eye of an Eagle and Visions in Verse.
99 New Mexicans . . .And a Few Other Folks /
Ellos Pasaron Por Aqui (They Passed by Here)
$16.95
Published in 2005, this volume is evidently Don Bullis’ first venture into the biography form which he has since developed into the award-winning parts one and two of New Mexico, A Biographical Dictionary. His aim is somewhat different in 99 New Mexicans; in this book he has assembled a more rarefied list of persons, and incidents, of interest.
Short chapters on, for example, Conrad Hilton, Billy the Kid, Elfego Baca, Geronimo, Pancho Villa, Clyde Tingley, and on others whose names are not readily recognizable to the ordinary reader reveal the history of New Mexico. The incidents, while mainly of the law enforcement or lack thereof type, also take in natural disasters, such as the Raton-Clayton blizzard of 1957, and the Folsom flood of 1908 that revealed the pre-historic bones which would identify the Folsom spear point. Bullis’ interests include early exploration, the settling of the frontier, the Civil War, the Lincoln County War, the fight for statehood, and Prohibition.
If I were to guess what Bullis likes best, though, I would say it is the oddball personality. Criminals of old, true outlaws, occupied one end of the spectrum; many frontier characters seem to have been not far behind. The other end of the spectrum, the heroic sort, is represented too.
Bullis is particularly skilled at tracking the activities of outlaws and their prosecutors, surely due to his own background as a lawman. He wields a confident pen when recounting the progress of legal cases through nineteenth century courts, sometimes commenting that a case “disappeared into the limbo of lost legal causes.” This is the voice of experience; bringing it to bear on historical cases is a good fit for both author and subject. He also brings this sensibility to evaluating the truth of historical evidence, arriving at commonsense conclusions, such as that Brushy Bill Roberts could not have been the “real Billy the Kid” as he claimed, and weighing the character of Kit Carson.
The book is dense with personalities and events of a long-gone New Mexico. While chiefly concerned with the slippery boundaries of the law, it includes discussions on various other topics, such as maps inaccurately drawn and their far-reaching consequences, and the unfair treatment of the Pueblo Indians. He also has a knack for dry humor, as in the story of a bank robbery gone bad: “Things did not go well.”
Bullis is interested in personalities, and he is no slouch at New Mexico history. His wide-ranging interests and his sense of wonder at people and events of the past in New Mexico are evident. Tony Hillerman wrote the Introduction, and prominent historians contributed glowing endorsements. It is a history book for everyone, and tells stories from a time when law enforcement in New Mexico was conducted in a way we cannot imagine today.
11/08 Reviewed by Drusilla Claridge author of Peacock Ore.
New Mexico: A Biographical Dictionary 1540-1980 Volume II
$17.95 PB, $32.95 HB
WINNER 2008 NEW MEXICO BOOK AWARDS
Although I am not familiar with Volume I of Bullis’ work, this is no hindrance to appreciating the contents of Volume II. It is laid out in a simple way, the entries are alphabetical, and the photo portraits add much to the biographical sketches of the subjects. Reading about the lives of people who made New Mexico their home, and in many cases personal project, is quite the most interesting way to learn about New Mexico history and culture.
Having lived here some 30-plus years now, the occasional entry weaves into my own life. I heard Linda Cotton’s fabulous singing voice more than once, and what an untimely death at age 55. I didn’t know my divorce attorney, Patsy Reinard of Socorro had died, or that she was the first woman lawyer to open a practice there.
Some of the juxtapositions of the entries are quite interesting: witness reclusive novelist Cormac McCarthy (still living) next to poor little Charley McComas, victim of the Apache Wars of the late 1870’s. The mysterious Lozen, sister of the great Apache chief Victorio, is two entries from Nancy Lopez, professional golfer, and adjacent to Abad Leroy Lucero, award-winning woodworker.
Rancher and former New Mexico Governor Bruce King, rancher and oilman Robert O. Anderson, and rancher, World War II veteran, and State Senator Floyd W. Lee are examples of those who made New Mexico their lifelong project. Anderson endowed the University of New Mexico Schools of Management, and was said to be one of the largest individual landowners in the U.S., with holdings of about one million acres in the southeast part of the state. His photo shows him in a fishing vest, I believe, and joking with the photographer. Handsome rascal. Wish I had met him, and I just missed, because he died in December of 2007. Floyd W. Lee, born in Albuquerque, returned from the World War II European theater to run a ranch near Mt. Taylor, and served as State Senator for 12 years. Bruce King we are all familiar with, and I assume his biography is in Volume I because I don’t see him in Volume II, although I do see his wife, Alice Martin King.
Everyone needed to make up the full complement of talents in a great and diverse state, is here: lawyers, judges, artists, scientists, World War II veterans, woodworkers, playwrights, ranchers, educators; New Mexico natives, others who arrived from elsewhere, and let’s not forget the occasional Hollywood star. Dan Blocker taught school in Carlsbad, New Mexico in the 1950’s before his success on television’s Bonanza playing "Hoss" Cartwright.
It is impossible for me to read these entries without imagining these people’s lives against the backdrop of the vast and wonderful land of New Mexico. The geography of this land, being of the special – enchanted – kind, makes it possible for the subjects of these biographies (and ourselves) to live life as art. Just as the artists and photographers came under the spell of the landscape, so did the woodcarvers express the land of their birth; and so did Floyd Lee take the land as his template when he returned from the war and took up sheep ranching, which necessarily soon morphed into cattle ranching, and his 12 years as State Senator.
The Timeline in the back is a natural complement to the thumbnail biographies, and the publisher thoughtfully provides a map identifying New Mexico’s counties, often referred to in the entries. The 14-page bibliography would keep any reader busy for a long time.
Covering everything from art to politics, this book has something different and interesting on every page; I can see why Volume I has garnered so many awards. It is a treasure of reference books, accessible, reader friendly, full of fascinating information. Indeed, I don’t see why it wouldn’t make good summer reading (winter, too, for that matter), especially for geeks like me who don’t care for trashy novels.
9/08 Reviewed by Drusilla Claridge, author of Peacock Ore
BULLIS, DON
New Mexico & Politicians of the Past: True Tales of Some of the State’s Founding Fathers and a Few Other Office Seekers and Holders
2009 New Mexico Book Awards Finalist
Author Don Bullis is well known for the depth of his knowledge and research regarding New Mexico history, law enforcement, and politics. In New Mexico & Politicians of the Past, he gathers together some of the state’s lesser known politicos and provides a short vignette of each man’s life (there are no women included in this collection, which is more likely due to the fact that women were not allowed to be part of politics in the past and not a case of the author’s chauvinism). The period represented is from the 1500s to the early 20th century.
Bullis made some rather interesting choices as to who was included in the book. Several of the snippets, such as those which relate farcical political fiascos and shady associations, are quite entertaining. Many give the reader a glimpse into a past era where garnering political position based purely on return favors and personal relationships was the norm.
Overall, I was not as impressed by this book as I normally am by Don Bullis and his gift for words. I have to wonder what motivated the author to feel that several of the men depicted were noteworthy or of any interest to the majority of readers. Perhaps it is because the biographies are so brief (2 – 3 pages) that I was unable to share Bullis’ enthusiasm for their contributions, in some cases quite small or obscure, to the state. The book itself is organized in an odd manner: alphabetically by name. I found it disconcerting to go back and forth in time; a more logical organization would have been chronological.
For those who are truly addicted to New Mexico’s political history, this book will certainly be entertaining. It cannot be argued that Bullis knows his history and has done extensive research. I, for one, however, would have liked the selection of biographies to be just a bit more stimulating and exciting.
3/09 Reviewed by Candace Morehouse author of Golden Enchantment
NEW
BULLIS, DON
New Mexico Historical Biographies
$48.95
With 775 pages and 1500 bios, this hefty tome is not something one carries along on vacation or reads in a weekend. From Abruzzo to Zollinger, these highly interesting vignettes give background of authors, artists, balloonists, astronauts, educators, politicians, athletes, ranchers, movie stars, and explorers. I found many friends and acquaintances in these pages, as well as many more whose names I recognized from history or the newspapers, and I enjoyed reading all of them. An engrossing collection of the famous and infamous, all of whom were New Mexicans or in some way connected to New Mexico, it contains amazingly few typos for such an ambitious undertaking. It’s a little like reading an encyclopedia, but the many photographs which are included give rest to one’s eyes in the midst of all the words.
I commend the author for a wonderful book.
November 2011 review by Lola R. Eagle, author, free-lance writer and poet
CHARLES, FIONA, editor
The Gift of Time
Dorset House Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-932633-75-0
Prolific author of more than forty books, Gerald Weinberg, a uniquely influential thinker and practitioner, is recognized on his seventy-fifth birthday in this compilation of biographical accolades written by seventeen colleagues and students, termed “a mixture of reminiscence, analysis, and technique,” the latter learned from Weinberg.
Some of these writers refer to concepts or techniques adopted or adapted from Weinberg’s writings.
Having spent fifty plus years teaching others computer technology and human communication through his Problem Solving Leadership (PSL) seminars in workshops such as Information Technology (IT) and Software as a Human Activity Performed Effectively (SHAPE), Weinberg has influenced people from more than one generation.
Simple, yet profound, one of his gems of wisdom remembered by his students is “Time is the most important gift you can give to other people.”
As someone who is barely computer literate, I wondered what I could derive from a book dealing in the main with software development, but I found it to be enlightening on many levels, one of which applied to myself as a writer: “Just start anywhere. You don’t have to start at the beginning.” A truism which many writers never discover until years into their career. Another was his “Law of Raspberry Jam” – the wider you spread it, the thinner it gets. How true, how true!
I particularly liked the section written by his wife and partner, Dani Weinberg, which delved into the man as someone other than an academic and writer.
Although I have no background in the lessons taught by Gerald Weinberg, I felt, as I read this book, that I’d have liked to attend his workshops. They would probably have made my insight stronger and my leadership skills learned easier and earlier.
7/09 Reviewed by Lola R. Eagle, writer and poet
CLARK, PAULLE
Wolf Song: A Love Story
Dog ear Publishing, ISBN 978-159858-502-5
WINNER 2009 New Mexico Book Awards
This book is the enthralling story of the wolf Panee and her pups, all adopted by the author and raised as a family, along with later adoptees of a mongrel puppy and another wolf hybrid pup.
With cats in the house and wolves in a fenced-in yard, Ms. Clark had her hands full for many years with feeding, doctoring, and chasing them across the mesas when they escaped from their safe domain.
Their story is told in a factual but absorbing fashion, including some sad events and many amusing tales of their peccadilloes during their years with the author at her home in Taos, New Mexico.
Ms. Clark subtitles her book “A Love Story,” a love which is evident in the many pages of pictures and watercolors of the animals with which it is illustrated.
Any dog lover or wild animal advocate will enjoy reading about the lives of these creatures taken lovingly into civilization.
4/09 Review by Lola R. Eagle, author of From the Eye of an Eagle
COBOS, EVELIA
They That Laugh Win
Rio Grande Books, ISBN: 978-1-890689-72-8
This is less a biography of Rubén Cobos than it is a memoir of the Cobos family, with father Rubén acting as the sun from which the rest of the family sends its rays.
So why write about Rubén Cobos? Most know him as a renowned linguist who
put together a dictionary of Northern New Mexico/Southern Colorado words,
which are unique to the area. However, I learned from this book that Rubén
Cobos was much more than just a linguist.
He was born in Mexico with both Jewish and Mexican Ancestry. He came to Albuquerque in 1927 speaking six languages and became a professor at the University of New Mexico. Rubén was an accomplished singer (tenor) who loved and performed all types of music. He also began collecting folklore from all over northern New Mexico during his weekends.
This book has familiar sights from around Albuquerque. Rubén attended
Menaul High School. There are scenes in Nob Hill, UNM, the Sunshine Theater,
the KIMO and others. The vignettes are familiar family scenes: the younger
brother smashing his sister’s fish bowl and being punished, the children
listening to music their parents didn’t like, the parents fighting in French
so the children wouldn’t understand. (In New Mexico today, that would be
more likely fighting in Spanish!) There are birthday parties with piñatas,
Dad teaching his too-young teen daughter how to drive in secret and a
daughter getting in trouble at school for hitting a girl who called her a
“dirty Mexican” and Dad going to the principal to defend her. There is the
unhappiness of divorce and the prejudice of a mother-in-law against Rubén
because he is Mexican.
There were a couple of things I struggled with in this book. One is that
the Spanish has errors in spelling and accents. A second is that the
descriptions of places sometimes interfered with the flow of the story and
family events. A third was that it was written in third person despite the
fact that Evelia was present at all the wonderful and sad family events. I
felt it would have been stronger if it had been in first person.
Throughout the book, Rubén Campos comes through as many rays of sunshine
with his stories, music and upbeat personality. Thank you, Evelia (“Chuchee”
to Rubén), for giving us this warm sunny portrait of your father.
10/10 Reviewed by Gloria Roybal
COGGESHALL, NANCY
Gila Country Legend – the Life and Times of Quentin Hulse
WINNER 2010 NEW MEXICO BOOK AWARDS
A hard-working, hard-drinking, rough, tough New Mexicocowboy/hunter/ fisherman/guide of the old school, Quentin Hulse’s story is told by his later-years companion. No glossing over, no pedestal placement, just frank and candid stories of this remarkable man who epitomized the old west cowman. Save for a short stint in the U.S. Navy during World War II, nearly all his life was spent in the Gila Wilderness region of New Mexico, ranching, guiding outdoorsmen to hunting camps, and buying and selling horses, sheep and hunting dogs.
An interesting collection of anecdotes with history interwoven, this eulogizes a man in a most remarkable way.
The author had excellent assistance in the production of this book, as attested to by the perfection of the editing.
10/10 Review by Lola R. Eagle, free-lance writer, author and poet
Home On The Farm (Essays on a Michigan Childhood)
1st Books Library, ISBN 1-4107-7938-6
With original drawings by the author introducing each chapter, the stories of a remembered boyhood spent on his farm home in Michigan are delightful glimpses into the author’s growing-up years in the 1930s and 1940s.
Word pictures of various family members are so deftly drawn that we have no trouble seeing them as the author saw them. The country schoolhouse is there for us to walk through, as is his family home. We can almost feel the cold in his story of winter adventures in the snow. We can hear the boyish enthusiasm in summertime fun in the old swimming hole.
He tells of his dog, Jake, and his fondness for the work horses, but the essays on the dangers of life on the farm driving tractors and using other pre-modern equipment make us realize that farm life was not all idyllic.
There’s even a chapter devoted to the old privy back of the house, a feature of old-time farm life that, although furnishing the reader with a quaint amusement in retrospect, is not missed in the modern world.
The author captures memories of a bygone era and gives us his memories to make our own.
11/08 Reviewed by Lola R. Eagle, author of More Visions in Verse
Leafing Through My Family Tree
Montanas Press, ISBN 1-922482-26
$12.00
FINALIST 2008 New Mexico Book Awards
An easy to read genealogical account of the Davis and Williamson families, tracing them back to their arrivals in America, and introducing the reader to many of the more recent relatives. Jerry Davis writes conversationally about parents, grandparents and distant cousins in a manner to pique our interest as he tells stories handed down through the family about Civil War veterans, family weddings, reunions, and “moving west” from the east to settle in Michigan.
With many pictures of ancestors and homesteads (the author has a photo wall with pictures back to his full set of two-times great-grandparents!) I found the book to be interesting, making me want to poke around in the pile of leaves from my own family tree.
11/08 Reviewed by Lola R. Eagle, author of The Music of Her Life: the Story of a Dakota Daughter
DAVIS, JERRY R.
Master of None; A Love/Hate Affair With Home Remodeling
ISBN 978-1-933582-42-9
Montanas Press $18.95
FINALIST 2009 New Mexico Book Awards
Who knows where the home improvement urge comes from, but I doubt anyone is exempt from it. It has always been the mark of human civilization: the move from cave to cliff dwelling. I myself have done a bit of changing wall colors and carpet, although mostly as designer; someone else provided the labor. Some people approach it hands-on, and Jerry Davis is such an individual.
This short, easily perused book covers the author’s life of remodeling and the journey his avocation took him on. The chapters are short and well written. The floorplans and photographs at the end of each chapter, illustrating the lodgings he describes and what he did to them, are a great help to the reader in following his narrative.
Davis’ re-modeling journey begins with creating closet space in his parents’ farmhouse in Michigan in his late teens, then moves on to various improvements he made to apartments he lived in as a young teacher. We get to accompany him on the purchase of his starter home, to which he made small but important changes. One wonders during these early accounts why he did not study architecture in college; he comes across as far more interested in his home remodeling projects than his teaching vocation.
Not long before his retirement, Davis surrenders to his desire to rescue the truly needy, buying a dilapidated little house requiring complete renovation. By the time he retires from his teaching job, the reader can see he is in a fever to renovate houses. The house he is in suits him, he can’t bear to sell the place he has just renovated by hand, and he sees another fixer-upper on the horizon. The inevitable second vocation rears its ugly head: Landlord. Of course Davis tells us about his landlord adventures.
I appreciate that he includes chapters on dealing with mortgage lenders, old and new, and the development of hardware stores into the mega home improvement stores we have now. He left a few things out, though, that I would have liked to see him cover. A few words about his teaching jobs and the moves they necessitated would be in order, and he says nothing whatever about his decision to move from Michigan to the Southwest. He includes a chapter on the decorative modifications he made to his new house in Albuquerque, but doesn’t explain how his previous experience helped him choose the house or work with the builder.
A notable omission is that Davis gives us no evidence supporting the “Hate” part of the “Love/Hate Affair” of the title. Sure, he suffers a lot of disruptions to his life in his remodeling projects, and particularly as landlord, but the closest he comes to hate feels no more passionate than justified exasperation.
Be that as it may, it is a well-written book, carrying the reader along easily on a journey from one house to the next, one clever solution to the next. Anyone who has ever visualized knocking down a wall, applying a coat of paint, or rescuing a fixer-upper (which I imagine includes nearly everyone) would enjoy this book.
12/09 Reviewed by Drusilla Claridge, author of Peacock Ore.
Tales of the Road: Essays on a Half Century of Travel
Author House, ISBN 1-4184-8720-1
$14.95
2009 New Mexico Book Awards Finalist
Tales of the Road is a collection of 21 travel vignettes dating back to 1953, each accompanied by a simple sketch.Mr. Davis reminds us that travel need not be to exotic locales in order to be entertaining and enriching. If we pay attention to possibilities, even more mundane travel can be insightful.
From his early travels as an exchange student in Germany where he and a fellow student commit a travel faux pas – settling in to a first class railroad car, with only third-class tickets - through a road trip to California that cost him a friendship, Davis is interesting and informative, and offers a touch of humor to lighten things up.
During the past half century, Mr. Davis has certainly visited a variety of interesting locations and acquired numerous humorous and possibly meaningful experiences. Although each vignette is centered on a potentially meaningful occurrence, Mr. Davis often provides only a surface description of events rather than a deeper examination of feelings engendered by the experience.
As a young man literally just off the boat in Germany, Mr. Davis relates he experienced the role of “foreigner” for the first time in his life. Well, what was the experience – alienating, confusing, delightful? Readers are left to wonder as Mr. Davis ends the vignette and moves on to the next story. Much later in life, Mr. Davis visited the American cemetery at Normandy to pay his respects to the memory of an uncle who died as a young man in the Allied invasion. What emotions played across Mr. Davis’ heart upon seeing his uncle’s name chiseled upon the war memorial? He provides few clues.
Mr. Davis has a wealth of stories to recount, and he should, more often, let his readers in on the emotional richness of his curious, humorous and sometimes baffling encounters around the world.
diSUVERO, VICTOR, Editor
We Came To Santa Fe: A Pennywhistle Press Anthology
29.00
FINALIST 2009 New Mexico Book Awards
When you open this coffee table book and sample some of these short essays, you will come away with the distinct impression you have just eavesdropped on confidences between friends. Not only that, but you are over-hearing them speak of their connection to a place. Through these accounts we can comprehend the mysterious, magnetic interaction between a place and its people. Such a place! And such people! The book is attention-grabbing in its subject matter, and sustains one’s interest with its personal voices.
When the compiler and publisher, (and one of several poets in the book) Victor di Suvero came to Santa Fe, he must have noticed how interesting his new acquaintances were. The idea of collecting what they had to say was simple, but not easy in the execution. I am glad he stuck with it, for we are the richer for this work.
I always knew Santa Fe must be full of these people, but how enlightening to actually read their words and see their photos. Here we meet the social worker counseling inmates at the State Penitentiary, past hippies who came to pursue organic gardening and natural childbirth, the artists (and others) who found themselves in Santa Fe through a curious series of coincidences; the horse-obsessed, the real estate-obsessed, the relationship-obsessed; world travelers, opera and museum directors.
This endless variety of characters begs the question: Is their presence why it is called the City Different, or did the place attract them? New Mexico justly has the reputation of being a quirky place, and this book all but proves Santa Fe is ground zero.
The book is at its best conveying the individual voice of each person. Perhaps Victor Di Suvero is one of those people in whom it is easy to confide; in nearly every case we have an intimate autobiographical account. He succeeds also in putting down on the page not only the person’s words but voice, and in the final analysis this is no small accomplishment.
I would be remiss if I did not point out the lack of copy-editing, and the uneven quality of the photos; the publisher himself acknowledges the “unavoidable flaws” in reproducing photos. More than that, the photo on page 42 of an artist in front of his work gives an idea of what could have been; with more photos of this quality, the book would have been visually stunning. As for copy-editing and spelling, consistency in these matters would not have detracted from the ‘friendly chat’ tone that comes through so strongly.
If you are interested in people and in New Mexico culture at all, you will enjoy this book.
3/09 Review by Drusilla Claridge, author of Peacock Ore
DOXON, LYNN ELLEN
Rainbows from Heaven: A Story of Faith Hope and Love that Created a Family
Artemesia Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1932926996
A good piece of creative nonfiction places the writer into a story, then draws us into the tale with vivid descriptions of scene, locale, odor, sound, culture, weather, emotion and people. Lynn Ellen Doxon’s Rainbows from Heaven: A Story of Faith Hope and Love that Created a Family, published by Artemesia Press, is an excellent piece of creative nonfiction. Chronicling the struggles Doxon and her husband, Robert Habiger, face as they try to adopt first one child, then three from a Ukrainian orphanage, Rainbows from Heaven catches our attention from page one, when Doxon presents a frightening world through the eyes of Anastasia and Snijana, two children abandoned by their father, in the care of older siblings and an alcoholic mother, and left to beg in front of a church for money to buy food.
From that beginning Doxon takes us on the emotional and spiritual journey she, her husband, and the children experience as they meet each other and a third sister, Irina, at a Kirovograd orphanage, and become attached to each other. The adoption process starts. Lynn and Robert fight the Ukrainian bureaucracy, inept officials and a stubborn judge who does all he can to stop the girls from leaving the country. The children begin to believe they will never reach America with their new Mom and Dad.
Descriptions of the people working for and against Doxon and Habiger, the Ukrainian countryside, the culture, the food, the weather, and above all the plight of homeless Ukrainian children will move the reader to tears, anger, and laughter. Sometimes the emotions pile on top of each other, as the spirit and optimism of childhood keeps these kids going through the toughest of situations, whether coping with the unnecessary death of a little friend, watching ice melt in a glass for the first time, or discovering the fun of an escalator ride.
Rainbows from Heaven: A Story of Faith, Love, and Hope that Created a Family is a must read for anyone considering international adoption, anyone desiring an inside look at part of Eastern Europe, or anyone wanting to read an uplifting story of a lively family. People can also benefit from the lessons this book can teach. It offers a reminder that perseverance can make he impossible possible, and that the toughest paths can reveal strength in people they didn’t know they had.
EWING, ROBERT A.
Douglas Johnson: A Painter’s Odyssey
A beautiful book chronicling the artistic life of Douglas Johnson. It includes dozens of color prints of his work, as well as the extraordinary cliff-dwelling home which he built with his own hands in the mountains of New Mexico.
From a beginning in California with trains, the story progresses through his stay with the Navajo in Arizona where he learned to make pottery, in addition to his painting.
In the ‘70s he moved to Santa Fe and Cerrillos, New Mexico. The years Johnson spent there are referred to as his “Van Gogh period.” During this time he had the first showing of his work in Santa Fe.
He then moved to a more reclusive spot in Agua Sarca and began building a home for himself out of native materials, while also painting. He continued to produce pottery, decorating with his original designs.
The Santa Fe art community recognized the uniqueness of the small paintings he produced and he began showing more of his art and with recognition came clients, and he finally began receiving monetary recompense for his work.
I found the prints of Johnson’s paintings lovely to look at and interesting to study as the periods evolved from one to another. The detail is always fascinating, whether in the work of his Arizona period, his Mexican period, or that done later. The flowers and birds in the foreground are quick to draw one’s eyes but then the viewer is carried beyond to a background of aesthetic portrayal.
This book is a treasure to be kept near at hand to page through again and again.
3/09 Review by Lola R. Eagle, author of Visions in Verse
FENOGLIO, ELLA JOAN
Retaggio:Discovering Italian Heritage
A Beautiful Time Publishing, ISBN 0-0716956-0-3
This is a story of a quest. The author begins by seeking out Italy to get in touch with her family roots, but the story goes much further as a desire to know the land from which her family came turns into a desire to know her ancestors. Part travel guide, part memoir, part coming of age, Retaggio is a compelling read.
In 1972, Fenoglio makes her first visit to Italy and manages to locate the family home with the help of distant cousins and only a rudimentary command of Italian. She takes a picture of a nearby house as a landmark so she may find her family home again.
She returns to Italy in 1996 and again in 1998 when she takes the pictures along to locate the family home again. But the landscape has changed and nothing matches the pictures and her quest to find the right mountain village begins all over again. That quest leads to finding some of the most picturesque people and places. She has left behind the travelouges of tourist Italy and is concentrating on the unseen and real parts of the countryside.
All in all, Retaggio is a love letter to her father who did not live to return to the country of his heritage. The people she meets and builds long standing friendships with become the heart of story.
Beware if you’ve ever had a yearning to go to Italy. This book will only make it stronger.
GATUSKIN, ZELDA LEAH
Ancestral Notes: A Family Dream Journal
$12.00
Gatuskin, a visual artist as well as a poet and writer, is fascinated by dreams, her own as well as ancestral dreams, those long memories seemingly attached to some part of our individual DNA. Just whose dreams and memories come to us unbidden anyway? Ancestral Notes: A Family Dream Journal grew out of Gatuskin’s investigations of two important aspects of her life: exploration of her dreams and the pathways they carve in her memory, as well as the bridges these long memory dreams build. Gatuskin delves deeper and deeper into her family’s genealogical history, including the seeming “dead ends” as a result of Holocaust losses. As she herself admits, “[M]y blood runs thick with ancestral memories of like-living, like-thinking, like-creating people. My old smell-brain recoils in fear, whimpers in pain, and laughs in pleasure via a genetic program that will take as many thousands of years to erase as it did to create.”
Gatuskin uses all her talents to understand the place and meaning ancestral memory occupies in her own life as she investigates “the classroom, libraries and museums of dreams to the textbook of genetic memory.” Ancestral Notes is a collection of Gatuskin’s collages, used to both explain and expand upon the meaning of her dreams as she captures descriptions of them in poems and selected journal writings.
Gatuskin also shares a few short stories, almost parables, all of a mystical tendency, all reminiscent of various Hasidic short stories. Her book contains a well spring of jumping off points helpful to those who are trying to make sense of their own dream journeys through the “Museum of Pain and Suffering.”
5/2009 Reviewed by Victoria Erhart
Beside The Rio Hondo: A Memoir of Rural New Mexico
$22.95
FINALIST 2008 NEW MEXICO BOOK AWARDS
This is a gem of a book. Billed as a memoir, it’s also a tale of coming-of-age and finding oneself in the unlikeliest of ways.
When author Phaedra Greenwood met the end of her twenty-year marriage, she chose to return to the small adobe house along the Rio Hondo near Taos where she had raised her children. It was home. “I needed the soft curves of the Sangre de Cristos to soothe my eyes, the silver thread of the Rio Hondo to mend my days,” she writes in chapter one.
The problem was her ex-husband had never added her name to the house. So he agreed to one year, charging her rent to live there, and had plans to sell the house at the end of that year. Her only hope was to somehow find a way to buy him out before the end of that year. Armed only with a credit card, sixteen quarts of canned apples and cherries, the family dog and two cats, and enough flour, sugar, powdered eggs and milk for three months, she returned to the home she loved determined to make a go of it in the old adobe casa, orchard, and garden.
What follows is a love letter to the people of the Rio Hondo area who generously reach out to help her through those first difficult months when she has to find her new self in an old world.
The writing is lyrical and soft as the whisper of the wind through her orchard. “The temperature is sinking like a lead weight,” she writes, “down to one degree last night. I strolled to the end of the orchard and paused beside the river, stunned by a sparkling cedar tree, crystalline snowflakes twirling down out of a clear sky, so beautiful that I cried.”
It’s not all beauty and peace. There are ditches to maintain, wood to chop, cold, and hunger, and a sheep crisis. Beautiful drawings by artists Glenda Gloss, Jan Gustafson, and Jim Pederson accent the stories as Greenwood stitches it all together into a beautiful book worth reading again and again.
HARRIS, FRED
Does People Do It? – A Memoir
Years ago, in a school classroom, a teacher asked who knew the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. Confident in my vocabulary skills, though too young to have good sense, I raised my hand and stated that a Democrat believed in democracy and a Republican believed in a republic. To my chagrin, the teacher, with a tolerant smile for my answer, informed me as well as the rest of the class that my answer was not acceptable in a government class. Not as yet having begun the study of government, I didn’t realize that she was asking for a political definition, and not that which is found in Webster’s dictionary.
With the passing of many years, I have learned that both Democrats and Republicans believe in democracy, but each has differences in their approach as to how to govern. Fred Harris, in his memoir, recounts his view from the Democrat side of the aisle.
Born during the Depression in a small Oklahoma town, he says he “sponged off his folks until he was five, and then straightened up and got a job,” and from then on was always working, mostly in the fields with his family. Deciding that he wanted to be a lawyer and go into politics, after graduating from high school he earned money to pay his way through Oklahoma University by working as a printer, never thinking there was anything he couldn’t do, because his uncle had taught him “if people does it, I can do it.”
By the age of nineteen he was married and well on his way through college. He began the first of his several careers – lawyer, politician, professor and writer. His political career started early, with his first wife LaDonna campaigning alongside him, first as he made an unsuccessful bid for governor of Oklahoma, then set his aspirations on the United States Senate, to which he was elected at age thirty-three.
With wit and a good memory, he chronicles his early life and the twelve years he and his family lived in Washington, D.C. during his terms in the Senate. Detailed conversations with many well-known political figures of the day, such as Hubert Humphrey, Ethel and Robert Kennedy, George McGovern, and Lyndon Johnson, among others, bring his story of the 60s and 70s political scene to life.
After a failed run for U.S. President, he and his family left Washington and moved to New Mexico, where he took up his third and fourth careers as a professor at the University of New Mexico and a writer. He parted ways in amiable terms with his wife of 33 years and later remarried, keeping a loving relationship with his children from his first marriage.
From decades of public service, Harris has much to offer from his knowledge of the workings of both our Congress and the political system. This latest book is a Democrat’s take on a historical era as well as an entertaining read.
11/08 Reviewed by Lola R. Eagle, author of From the Eye of an Eagle
HASSRICK, PETER H. and CUNNINGHAM, ELIZABETH J.
In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein
$34.95 Paper
Hassrick and Cunningham prepared In Contemporary Rhythm to accompany a retrospective exhibit of Ernest Blumenschein’s work. Their own articles are enriched with essays by four other writers and by full-color illustrations of virtually every painting in Blumenschein’s long career.
Blumenschein’s career was rooted in New Mexico, but he was nationally recognized first as an illustrator and then as a painter. He was a co-founder of the Taos Society of Artists and worked tirelessly to create opportunities for young artists. His own work, however, couldn’t be pigeonholed with a single tradition and he was only a member of the Taos Society for a few years.
Blumenschein came from a musical family and was formally trained in music before he studied painting. He brought habits of discipline and respect for form to his new work, frequently reworking paintings that didn’t sell before sending them to be hung in another show.
In works that moved from academic to modern paintings, Blumenschein painted representational paintings, but used color rather than perspective as the architecture of depth and distance and form. Blumenschein rarely commented on his own paintings, but he wrote extensively about art, so the book is able to show his developing ideas about painting.
The essays and scholarly notes take the reader through Blumenschein’s early success as an illustrator and his transition to painting and to New Mexico. The book is an interesting narrative about his growth as an artist–or you can read it as a history of American art, or as a history of New Mexican artists through two wars and a depression.
What’s surprising about the book? It’s fun. Blumenschein’s life touched so many other artists you could read this book for the social biography. Or you could read it as social history. Or as a history of trends in the national, international and regional art markets. You could, I suppose, read it for the mentoring in developing an art career with high standards and passionate exploration.
The truth is, though, that the paintings themselves make the book. He was as diverse as New Mexico itself, with murals, illustrations, portraits, crowd scenes, and landscapes. He was an early champion of Native American rights and his paintings of Indians and of local Hispanics are magnificent. Near the end of his life, he began wintering in Albuquerque and painted city scenes. If you have only seen one of his styles, the book will hold rich rewards.
4/09 Reviewed by Mary O’Gara, co-author of The Trouble with Romance
A Cliffie Experience; Tales of New Mexico 1902-1940
Diamond Press, ISBN 0-9776005-0-5 AMAZON
$25.00
FINALIST 2007 New Mexico Book Awards
This book has many pleasing elements; the covers are attractive, the layout is reader friendly, and the historical photos add a welcome note of authenticity. The author has stories to tell; her attention to detail vividly draws the reader into the time and place. Her portrait of Cliffie is adroit; this is not an easy thing to do. The way Heaphy introduces her is effective: “For Cliffie, everything was a great adventure. A Cliffie Experience!”
Clifford Myrick, Cliffie, was a woman to be reckoned with. Working her way up from picking cotton on a Louisiana farm to nursing, she discovered New Mexico as a young woman accompanying tuberculosis patients in search of a cure. She found in the landscape and culture of New Mexico a way of life that matched her own boundless vitality. She was always stylish, refusing to give up her high heels even when visiting ranches, where she sported high-heeled, lace-up boots. She was curious about everything, and apparently amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of New Mexico’s history and cultures. The Irish spitfire in her was not far below the surface, as she divorced both husbands, although she re-married the second. She lived in what is now the Albuquerque Press Club, and filled the house (the Hall Log House) with family and friends.
The spirited Cliffie adopted the author as a child, but nothing of this incident in their lives is related. “Cliffie had no children of her own, but raised many and adopted two, including myself.” This sentence in the Epilogue ought to have been expanded into a chapter. That untold tale lurks in the underpinning of the book. Heaphy is eager to tell us about people who, although prominent in Albuquerque history, like the Tingleys, are not central to her life with her adopted mother, or to our understanding of Cliffie. Women’s history needs to be strong on the family theme, and without knowing why or how Cliffie adopted the author, a piece of her family history is left blank. The reader is the poorer for it.
Surely Heaphy is very talented writer, but she shifts between the styles of a romance novel and that of a middle school textbook. I was not at all surprised to learn that most of her adult life she taught middle school English. In the last five to six chapters, Heaphy finally allows a true memoirist voice to emerge. If only she had found it earlier!
In the historical photos I could see for myself many of the sites and faces of these stories of Albuquerque. I found particularly interesting her accounts of motoring on roads that were still a pair of dirt tracks crossing the desert, or climbing La Bajada between Albuquerque and Santa Fe (my favorite chapter). Heaphy succeeds in invoking time, place, and the person. We are captivated by the exotic in each of them, and all taken together they form an unforgettable picture.
10/08 Review by Drusilla Claridge, author of historical novel Peacock Ore.
HUNNER, JON
J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Cold War, and the Atomic West
University of Oklahoma PressISBN 978-0-8061-4046-9
FINALIST 2010 New Mexico Book Awards
Born into a wealthy Jewish family in New York City, Robert Oppenheimer attended a progressive private school where he quickly grasped complex concepts and ideas. He mastered math, science and literature easily, and readily learned other languages, but disliked laboratory work, finally opting for theoretical physics as his main focus while still in college.
He came to New Mexico when he was young, hoping to regain his strength after pushing himself to such an extreme in his college work that his health suffered. His ties to New Mexico and his love of the high desert and mountains were instrumental in the choice of Los Alamos as the location for the secret work done during World War II.
Photographs are included of his family, his associates, work on the atomic bomb, and the devastation caused by the use of that bomb. While he never regretted the use of the bomb which ended World War II, he spent much of his later life attempting to make world leaders understand the consequences of that use.
Because he was not in favor of further study and experimentation of a hydrogen bomb, coupled with his attendance at Communist meetings when he was young, he earned the label of “fellow traveler,” as Communists were dubbed during the McCarthy era. In the ‘50s he was hounded by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and other government agencies, eventually losing credibility and his rightful place in the formulation of policy dealing with arms build-up.
The author does an amazing job of getting into the fabric of Oppenheimer’s character, beginning with his family life, on into his college years, his first romance, his association with the Communist Party during his youth (along with many of America’s young people who explored that philosophy during the Great Depression), his marriage, and his tremendous contribution to the development of the bomb which ended WWII.
Besides being a wealth of historical information, this book is an interesting dissertation on a significant personage and how hysteria can slant the attitudes of a nation.
12/09 Reviewed by Lola R. Eagle, writer and poet
Kerschen, Karen
Violetta Parra: By the Whim of the Wind
ABQ PRESS, ISBN: 978-0-9843024-1-3
This is a well-researched, well-organized and moving portrait of Violeta Parra. It includes notes, a glossary and an extensive bibliography.
Violeta Parra had a mixed ancestry like many from Latin America. She had an indigenous grandmother, one grandfather who was a sharecropper and another who was a lawyer. She was an important musician associated with the Nueva Canción movement in Chile. These are true, but she was so much more. She gathered Chilean folklore from peasants and used them to make radio and television shows. She once won a flamenco music contest-the only non-Spaniard who entered. She became the first Latin American to have an exhibition at the Louvre in Paris with mixed types of art: painting, papier mache masks, clay sculptures, wire sculpture and her beloved embroidery called arpillera which was colorful wool embroidered on burlap. The exhibit was in 1964. Violeta was even a circus worker, a singer in bars and friends with the likes of Nobel Prize Winner Pablo Neruda and fellow singer Victor Jara who was killed when Pinochet took over the government.
As a child, Violeta had been sickly and her face became pock-marked. Many considered her ugly. Nonetheless, she was never at a loss for husbands or lovers-many of them younger than her. The outstanding one for her was Gilbert Favre, 20 years her junior. They were together, apart and back together again until Gilbert finally left because of Violeta’s violent temperament.
The book gives wonderful examples of Chilean customs such as the national dance called Cueca which has a rhythm of step-step-pause in which the couple carries handkerchiefs and imitates roosters and hens courting. Another custom discussed was the velorio del angelito when a young child died. The baby’s body was surrounded with heavenly scenes, candles, flowers. They body was dressed in a white shroud with a crown on its head and placed on a seat of straw with toys in its hand. Then they sang to the baby.
Violeta was a tortured woman and killed herself with a gun. However, this book shows what a true genius she was and gives quite a deep and nuanced picture of her. One of her last songs before her suicide had the words: Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto (thanks to life, which has given me so much.) What an irony for a woman who was about to kill herself in a violent way.
10/10 Reviewed by Gloria Roybal
KIDDER, LYN
Tacos on the Tundra
Bonaparte BooksISBN 0-9654826-2-6
Biographies are one of my favorite things to read, and I thoroughly enjoyed this one about the life of Fran Tate after she moved to the arctic town of Barrow, Alaska. Her adventures and misadventures working at varied occupations, and then opening a Mexican food restaurant in that frigid northern part of the world provide hilarious reading. Her diverse working life and all that she accomplished for her adopted town is a fascinating story, extremely well-told by author Lyn Kidder.
Married five times, Fran kept picking the wrong man, but throughout it all she kept plugging away, working several jobs at once, going from one undertaking to another, doing everything she did well. She became a national figure during the ‘80s, appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Whether it was running a restaurant, doing her yearly stint as the Easter Bunny, emceeing a radio show, driving a water truck, working as a barmaid, or buying up properties and putting up buildings, she threw herself into her endeavors with all her might.
A good story and an inspiration, it made me want to pack up and head north.
6/10 Reviewed by Lola R. Eagle, free-lance writer and poet
Sadie Orchard: The Time of Her Life
PDX Printing, ISBN: 978-0-615-18853-9 AMAZON
$15.00
This little book is a welcome addition to the works on southwest New Mexico, as well as on women’s lives in the settling of the West. Those who settled that quadrant of the state were of the hardy, entrepreneurial type, arriving relatively late to a wilderness inhabited by Apaches through much of the 19th century. This book on Sadie Orchard, who played a prominent role in the history of Kingston and Hillsboro, draws our attention to another of these rugged individualists, and a woman at that.
Sarah Jane Creech arrived in Kingston in 1886, at the height of a silver mining boom; she was 27 years old, and probably carried some cash on her. She had been earning her living as a prostitute in a mining camp somewhere in the West, hence the cash; also the knowledge that booming Kingston was where she could re-invent herself as madam (with English accent no less, although she was born in Iowa). In the early 1890’s she moved a few miles down the creek to Hillsboro, where she had a hotel and a restaurant.
She lived to the age of 84, was interviewed numerous times, and not once named the town where she had lived while earning her stake. No one ever really figured out where she got her English accent, either.
The author’s comprehensive approach includes a few pages on the wretched living conditions of the time, particularly for prostitutes. This is important material for the subject of the book, making us appreciate Sadie’s spunk in pulling herself up out of prostitution and taking on the responsibilities of a businesswoman. Interestingly, her rise into respectability was flawed. After her restaurant and hotel were well established, she again acted as madam, building a couple of rooms onto the rear of the hotel for her girls. Although she married, her husband appears to have been an alcoholic.
J. W. Orchard owned and ran a stage line serving Hillsboro, Kingston, and Lake Valley, a nearby mining community with a train depot. Most certainly Sadie was involved in his business as well. It was even said that she drove the stages, a story she herself told in later years, although the author’s careful research turned up no evidence of this.
Women of the demi monde were prone to short lives, and when they were able to re-invent themselves as respectable citizens, were anxious to conceal their former occupation, so it is unusual to have this much biographical material on one of them. To know Sadie’s date and place of birth, her real name, how she successfully transformed herself, and where and when she died, strikes me as unusual in the annals of the history of prostitution in the West. But Sadie Orchard was an unusual person who lived an unusual life.
I applaud King for cautioning us about the authenticity of many of the stories she relates. Some of the stories illustrate the way oral history so easily exceeds reality, such as Sadie driving the stagecoach. Some of them strike me as tales men enjoyed relating about her, whether true or not, “She took on every man in camp.” I also appreciate how King lets us know whom she is quoting, so we can judge for ourselves the authenticity of the person’s voice.
In her efforts to be comprehensive, however, King sacrifices emphasis. We don’t need the detailed description of a Concord stagecoach, and she spends too few paragraphs on the wretched conditions that shortened the lives of prostitutes. The book would benefit from better copy editing, too.
A simple, not scholarly work, yet full of colorful stories, the book makes an honest effort to stick to the facts. The author must have gone to a great deal of trouble to obtain the historical photos included, which show Sadie in her prime, as well as what the old mining camps looked like. It adds to the knowledge of womens’ history and the history of southwest New Mexico, an obscure place to be sure, but one with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of wonderful tales.
10/08Review by Drusilla Claridge, author of Peacock Ore.
KREITER, TIM
Adventures of a Substitute Teacher
Snapdragon, ISBN 978-0-9845681-7-8
This is a delightful humorous book about what it’s like to be a substitute teacher. The author retired from being an aerospace engineer for NASA and decided to become a substitute teacher. He figured that the schools would especially need substitutes for math and science classes so his background and experience fit the bill perfectly.
However, he ended up teaching a little bit of every kind of class. Even the students in the science and math classes were often not very tuned in to the subject matter. He compares some of the situations he encountered as being like putting socks on an octopus. He taught pre-school, all grades, middle school, high school and special ed. In addition to science and math, he subbed for music, advisories (formerly known as study halls) and any number of other subjects/situations. In one special ed class, he had one student who vomited involuntarily, an autistic child who didn’t talk but walked round the room constantly and a Down’s Syndrome student who slept almost all day. Throughout the book, Mr. Kreiter used fictitious names to protect both the innocent and the guilty!
Sometimes he had lesson plans (some extremely detailed) and other times none at all. To make it through the day, he carried what he called his bang-clank kit. That was a briefcase with any number of interesting gadgets, ideas just to help him get through the day. (Even regular teachers would do well to have a bang-clank kit!!) Often, he would turn to his skills as a cartoonist to get the students interested and involved and keep them busy until the bell rang. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
As a teacher and former substitute teacher, I related very well to many of the situations Mr. Kreiter found himself in. He treats everything with a great deal of humor and has you chuckling at many impossible situation. Because of the humor, however, sometimes the SHEER TERROR of being a substitute with a class of misbehaving students who will do nothing is lost.
I recommend this book to any teacher, new or experienced and, definitely to any one considering working as a substitute teacher. In fact, I would recommend that the substitutes take his example and make a bang-clank kit. This book should be part of the kit. You can then choose an appropriate episode, read it to the students and ask them to compare the story with their own class. It is really a delightful book!
9/11 Reviewed by Georgia Roybal
LOEFFLER, JACK
Survival Along the Continental Divide: An Anthology of Interviews
Survival Along the Continental Divide is not a perfect book, but Jack Loeffler’s interviews are so lively and informative I barely noticed.
Loeffler’s interviews explore our cultural and economic diversity in three important ways:
-Our heritage and diverse ways of living
-The impact of federal programs during the Depression
-Approaches to our future ecology and population issues
Loeffler’s interviews invite us into the minds and lives of people who work daily with questions of culture and place.
Paul Horgan shares the history of the peoples of the Rio Grande valley.
Navajo weaver Roy Kady invites us into his family hogan and talks about the first loom and how the tools of male weavers and female weavers differ and what stories and songs are part of the weaving.
Estevan Rael-Galvez shares family and regional stories about slave trade between our cultures. He speaks from the perspective of stolen children, but also from the viewpoint of the mixing of cultures.
Eliseo Rodriguez shares the beginnings of his career as an artist hired by the federal arts programs in the Depression.
Like all good conversations, the ones in this book shift in interesting ways. New Mexicans were used to poverty. The Depression actually brought new cash money and training.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) provided job training, and perhaps accidentally prepared young New Mexican men for service in the Army after Pearl Harbor. The CCC projects affected and helped every corner of the state, and New Mexico youths learned about other cultures by working in other states.
The federal programs not only fed the families of writers and artists, but preserved important works in public buildings.
Throughout the book, Loeffler’s subjects come back to the ways we live on this arid land. Loeffler’s subjects talk about how trees and mountains are part of Pueblo communities, just as people are. We learn that John Wesley Powell wanted to change our geological survey methods from grids to watersheds–but lost the battle. We see ecologists and ranchers learning to work together.
This is the book I would give a good friend who had recently moved to New Mexico and wanted to understand our way of life. And after four decades, I was surprised with new ideas page after page.
4/09 Reviewed by Mary O’Gara, co-author of The Trouble with Romance
MANDELBAUM, JONNA-LYNN K.
Malarial Fevers
Dog Ear Publishing, ISBN 978-159858-387-8
An extremely well-written account of Protestant missionaries in Africa during the latter part of the 19th century, created from letters and diaries of the grandparents of one of the author’s cousins.
Written like a novel, the story begins with the Bennett family, John and Harriet and their two small sons, traveling by horse-drawn wagon and train from their prairie home in Kansas to New York City. As missionaries sent by the Free Methodist Missionary Board, they set sail, along with another couple, their young daughter, and two unmarried women, for their new life in Mozambique.
In the five years the Bennetts serve in Africa, they teach the natives about God and how He is one with the god they worshipped.They translate parts of the Bible into the native language and they teach native students to read with the help of a dictionary they put together of words from the local language. Basic rules of cleanliness are shared, as well as what little medicines and medical knowledge they have. In return, they learn the native language, much of the culture of the land, and the use of native medicinal herbs and foods. They come to love the friends they make among the native population, as well as the country itself, even though the climate gives them recurring bouts of malaria.
A realistic recounting of daily life takes the reader back in time to events as they may have occurred, with descriptive attention to details of dress, mode of transportation, diet, schooling, and native culture. It does not attempt to preach, but deals frankly with the human problems of the missionaries living in Africa at the time, including the problem of intermittent and infrequent communication with the home church missionary board which delayed resolution of problems and salary for the missionaries. John eventually felt forced to transfer his allegiance to a different mission board.
The love between John and Harriet is evident in their daily interaction. Their devotion to their work and the people whom they serve is also evident. One couple, in particular, become their dear friends and take over the managing of the mission when the Bennetts leave Africa due to ill health.
With poetic language and excellent writing skills, the author narrates one of the best-told missionary stories I’ve had the pleasure to read.
5/ 2009 Review by Lola R. Eagle, author of From the Eye of an Eagle and The Music of Her Life
MARAH, BERTIE STROUP
Born With a Rusty Spoon
Plain View Press ISBN 978-1-935514-66-4
Tales of calamity and real poverty make up this intriguing collection of reminiscences of a family living through the Great Depression and ensuing years. What could have been a very depressing book is made enjoyable with humor and the hell-raising antics of a close family, told in salty, down-to-earth language from a capacious memory.
Bertie and her brothers and sisters are moved from pillar to post with their parents, forever following the road to a new job, living in run-down shacks and tents in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico, subsisting on beans and cornbread much of the time, but always knowing they are loved. In a few years, parents Bea and Hollan Tracy divorce, with Bea marrying P.G. Anderson, another down-at-the-heels cowboy. P.G. and Bea couldn’t save any money to better their circumstances, partly due to the fact they liked their liquor. From ranch to oil fields to restaurant and liquor store owners, and back again to ranches, the Andersons toiled and drank and caroused their way through life.
Bertie, being the oldest girl, sandwiched between two older brothers and two younger sisters, bears much of the burden for the care of her siblings while her parents work.
Early in life, she feels an artistic bent and over the years develops her painting skills. By the time she is married, she has won awards for her art, but lets it go by the wayside to begin raising her own family. Eventually, her marriage deteriorates, she attempts suicide, is miraculously brought back from the edge of death, and renews her passion for painting. A loving second husband brings her happiness, and her art brings her acclaim.
This autobiography is both poignant and interesting. Many of Bertie’s delightful and beautiful watercolors are reproduced in its pages.
As so often happens, the editing leaves something to be desired, as words and punctuation are often erroneously printed. However, aside from those distractions, the book is a well-told story of a slice of Americana.
10/10 Review by Lola R. Eagle, free-lance writer, author and poet
MARQUART, JAN
The Breath of Dawn – A Journey of Everyday Blessings
Free to Pen Publications, ISBN 978-1-60643-807-7
$14.95
What if you were suddenly caught in the nightmare of a poisoned system, paralyzing your body, muddling your mind, and leaving you helpless, dependent on others for all your needs?
What if the doctors couldn’t determine what exactly was wrong with you – was it a stroke or poison or multiple sclerosis? -- and didn’t know how to treat you?
What if you lost your ability to talk, your long-term relationship, and your career as a result?
Could you handle it?
The author takes us along through the advent of her sickness, the terrifying days and weeks of struggle to regain her health, and her triumph at last.
A determination to get well, courage to tackle insurmountable odds, and many friends brought Jan through the terrible experience, which she relates with personal insight.
The revelation of the cause of her sickness as poisoning by a combination of innocuous herbs which were supposed to give her healthy hair gives us pause to contemplate what we put into our bodies.
Reviewed June 2009 by Lola R. Eagle, author and poet
MILLER, DARLIS A.
Open Range: The Life of Agnes Morley Cleaveland
University of Oklahoma Press 978-0806141176
In the 1940’s, Agnes Morley Cleaveland wrote one of the preeminent works of American non-fiction about the western frontier, No Life For a Lady. It was an instant best-seller, has never been out of print, and appeared recently (January, 2011) on the New Mexico Book Co-op’s list of “100 Best New Mexico Books.” Darlis Miller’s biography of Cleaveland is an important addition to New Mexico scholarship, and will be of interest to anyone familiar with the book and the period of New Mexico history it portrays.
No Life For a Lady covers the cattle ranching days of the late 1800’s, when Agnes grew up on a ranch in western New Mexico near Datil. In Miller’s book, Open Range, we discover Agnes was in her sixties, living in Berkeley, California, when she wrote her memoir. She was a published writer, belonging to, indeed, helped found the California Writer’s Club. Prominent writers she knew, in particular Eugene Manlove Rhodes and Conrad Richter, for years had urged her to write down her stories of her early life on the Datil cattle ranch.
Her memoir is about living on horseback, managing cattle, keeping a watchful eye for Indians and outlaws, helping one’s neighbors, and knowing the land. Miller’s chapter on the writing of it is revealing. The book did not spring fully formed from Cleaveland’s pen; she and editors at Houghton Mifflin worked hard together to create this American classic.
Cleaveland deliberately left out of the memoir large chunks of her adult life. Miller’s biography fills in the gaps so seamlessly that nothing about Agnes which comes to light is truly surprising. Her voice in No Life For a Lady communicates her lively, observant, and intelligent personality; news of her children, her political activism (she was a lifelong friend of Lou Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover), and her involvement in Christian Science, all seems characteristic.
Even though she lived much of her life in California, Agnes returned to the Datil area often. She loved this high, pine-scented country, so full of treasured memories for her, and died there in the spring of 1958.
Open Range: The Life of Agnes Morley Cleaveland by Darlis A. Miller makes a valuable contribution to New Mexico history and biography. It illuminates the powerful personality of a woman whose life was inextricably bound to New Mexico, and whose vivid memoir about the bygone days of cattle ranching is a significant literary work to this day.
2/11 Reviewed by Drusilla Claridge, author of Peacock Ore
PECK, RICHARD E.
Something for Joey
Laurel Leaf ISBN-13: 978-0553271997
Something for Joey is a love story—a story of the strong love that the members of the Cappelletti family had for each other, but mostly, the love between two brothers.
Both brothers were heroes in their own way---John Cappelletti, the football star at Pennsylvania State who went on to win the Heisman Trophy, and Joey who never let his battle with leukemia get him down.
Joey idolized his older brother and was loved back ferociously in return. When Joey told John he wanted touchdowns for his birthday, John gave him touchdown after touchdown. That was something he could do for his brother and he put his whole heart into it.
Something for Joey is a delightful book, an easy read, and one that brings tears and chuckles to the reader as the story of a very brave little boy and his famous older brother unfolds. It is a book that can be enjoyed by both young and older readers.
Richard Peck, a prolific author, poet, and playwright, is a retired professor and college administrator who once served as president of the University of New Mexico. Three of his plays have won national competitions and his novel Final Solutions was nominated as best science fiction novel of the year.
5/10 Reviewed by Mary A. Lombardo, author of Two Minute Meditations: A Daily Walk with the Saints
PECK, RICHARD E.
Traveling At My Desk: Stories for 52 Weekends
REPertory Publishing, ISBN 0-9726308-4-8
Richard Peck is a funny man. If you don’t believe me, read his book, Traveling at My Desk. Sub-titled “Stories for 52 Weekends,” this clever book of less than 200 pages is a collection of newspaper columns the author wrote for four different periodicals. The volume has an unprepossessing appearance: don’t be fooled. Peck’s adroit writing will make you laugh out loud. The common theme of these essays is his witty way with words. Peck takes us along on his life, and his world travels, which included Italy, the Orient, Mexico, and Norway.
We also get childhood reminiscence: Does spit freeze before it hits the ground when the temperature is 40 below? As a young squirt he tested the theory; the reader will find out his results. We get a bit of advice on how to update family traditions, particularly the Christmas Eve meal. Oyster stew is out-dated, what’s a modern family to do? We see him conspire with his kids, who endorse homemade pizza over his wife’s more seasonally appropriate ideas: a new family tradition is born.
Those are just two examples of the territory over which Peck ranges. Cultural differences are always good for a chuckle, especially from his year of living in Italy; evidently he lived in England for awhile, too. He wrote columns on dieting, modern conveniences, sports, and language. Most of them are no more than three pages long.
Peck’s way with words can be warm or acerbic, depending on his mood; when turning to a new essay the reader never knows which it will be. That’s fine, his talent for humor: “I’m writing this at 37,000 feet over Texas (that’s close enough)” creates an eager anticipation for the next witticism.
You won’t want to take 52 weekends to read this book; one will suffice. If you happen to be traveling, I suggest leaving it in the airport lounge to lighten another traveler’s day.
2/10 Reviewed by Drusilla Claridge, author of Peacock Ore.
Silent Voices of World War II
Much research and many interviews are evident in this comprehensive collection of stories of New Mexican’s involvement in the Great War.
Stories told by Navajo Code Talkers and New Mexico National Guard veterans of the war years, harsh and graphic in places because of the experiences behind the telling, lead the reader to wonder how man can live through such ordeals and carry on afterward. These tough, courageous men relied much on their faith and a strong bond of comradeship to carry them through the torturous horrors of war. Some of those who managed to survive the Bataan Death March, the agonizing travel by ship to prisoner of war camps in Japan, the slave labor and brutal treatment until the war’s end, came home at last and are alive today to share their stories.
The stories of Japanese-American citizens, who were subjected to years of internment solely because of their ancestry, while many of their family members fought in the military of the United States, bring feelings of guilt and shame for our government’s actions toward them during that time.
The third section of this remarkable book deals with the making of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and the historic figures, now legendary, who accomplished that feat, as well as the reasoning behind the decision to use the bomb to preclude a land invasion of Japan.
Much history unfolds in these pages, told from the mouths of those who lived it. If only the mistakes and horrors of the past could prevent history repeating itself, a work such as this would be invaluable.
1/09 Reviewed by Lola R. Eagle, author of From The Eye of an Eagle
ROYBAL, DAVID
Taking on Giants: Fabián Chávez and New Mexico Politics
Anyone who has the slightest interest in New Mexico politics in the modern era should run, not walk, to the nearest book store to buy a copy of Taking on Giants: Fabián Chávez and New Mexico Politics.
Many in the younger generation, I suspect, do not know who Fabián is, or what he accomplished. (And note: the name is pronounced, as indicated, with the accent on the last syllable, and not like the rock and roll singer of years gone by.) But those of us born before 1940 well remember him, and what he did for New Mexico during the many years he served as a legislator, in both the house and the senate. While I met Fabián a few times in the 1970s, I was not well acquainted with him personally, and the value of this book is that it provided me with the details of a public career of note.
Born in 1924, Fabián was old enough to participate in World War II, which he did with distinction. He actually lied his age and was on active duty in early 1941, well before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). It was after the war, though, when he played an important part in a New Mexico that was growing like never before; from just over a half million (531,818) in 1940 to nearly three times that number (1,519,889) in 1990.
While he was involved in numerous issues, two gained him the most notoriety: the Justice of the Peace system and the political power of the state’s liquor lobby.
New Mexico’s JP system, was, in many instances, a disgrace. There were no educational or training standards in place, which meant that anyone with a pulse was qualified to serve. Among their full time occupations were barbers and bar owners, mechanics, Indian traders and tow truck operators, among others. They operated on the basis of a pay arrangement that only rewarded them when they found defendants guilty. Conviction rate in some JP courts stood consistently at 100%. Because of their excesses, New Mexico was on the AAA speed trip list for many years. Fabián led the fight to change that system, which was not popular among his Democratic friends because most of the JPs were Democrats. His efforts paid off when the system was changed to modern magistrates who receive no part of offender fines.
The liquor industry had long exerted considerable influence in the state legislature which had allowed for the control of wholesale and retail pricing. Fabián discovered that liquor prices in New Mexico were among the very highest in the nation. Changing that system was no easy matter, either, and the legislator found himself in the middle of a maelstrom of controversy. Mythology has grown up around a confrontation between Fabián and the chief liquor lobbyist, Frank “Pancho” Padilla that took place in Santa Fe’s La Fonda Hotel during the legislative session in 1963. Fabián’s first person account of that altercation makes this book worth the price. Suffice it to say that that liquor lobby lost.
Author David Roybal is a longtime newspaper man who did a good job of putting Fabián’s career into historical perspective. He also interviewed sources other than Fabián himself, in both political parties. The result is a first-class historical document.
11/08 Reviwed by Don Bullis, author of The New Mexico Biographical Dictionary
