Southwest Books of the Year
Bruce Dinges's Picks
Bruce Dinges is the director of publications for the Arizona Historical Society.
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
by Brady Udall (W.W. Norton)
Udall, the most recent to surface in a long line of distinguished Arizona Udalls, makes an indelible contribution to southwestern letters in this accomplished debut novel set on and around the Fort Apache Indian reservation in east-central Arizona. Combining personal experience with a wonderfully inventive imagination, Udall tells the story Edgar Presley Mint, a half-anglo/half Apache boy run over by a mail truck. Miraculously saved from death but unable to speak, Edgar begins an odyssey from hospital to boarding school to foster family in search of home and a reunion with the man who injured him. By turns comic and tragic, this picaresque story of loss and redemption invites easy comparisons with the best work of John Irving and Ken Kesey, but the voice that comes through is uniquely Udall's, who has written a landmark in southwestern fiction.
Loving Pedro Infante
by Denise Chavez (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)
Chavez (Face of an Angel, The Last of the Menu Girls) assures her place in the pantheon of accomplished chicana writers with this rollicking story of the joys and woes of Tere Avila, a thirty-something teacher's aide in Cabritoville (read Las Cruces), New Mexico, and the sisterhood (mostly) of Pedro Infante Club #256 dedicated to perpetuating the memory of the Mexican movie idol who died in a 1958 plan crash. Divorced and dissatisfied with her life, Tere embarks on a relationship with a married man that forces her to confront the hard choices we all face in life and love. Along the way, readers are introduced to the company of warm and sassy women spouting dialogue that will leave you laughing out loud. Graced with one of the handsomest dustjackets of the year, Chavez's wise and witty book is a rollicking exploration of the romance in our everyday lives.
The Struggle for Apacheria: Eyewitness to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890. Volume 1
by Peter Cozzens (Stackpole Books)
In this ultimate sourcebook on the Apache Wars, Cozzens has assembled from newspapers, magazines, and archival repositories nearly eighty first person accounts chronicling a quarter century of brutal warfare and uneasy coexistence in Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. In compelling variety and detail, men and women, soldiers and civilians, Anglos and Indians provide modern readers with a wealth of more-or-less unvarnished impressions of military campaigns, the hardships of frontier life, conditions among the Western Apache, treaty making, and government policy. Because they were written without the benefit of hindsight, these eyewitness accounts impart a sense of immediacy lacking in even the best narrative histories, while also providing students and lay readers with candid insight into a world of hostility and mutual distrust that we can otherwise only dimly imagine more than a century after Geronimo's final surrender.
Woodcuts of Women
by Dagoberto Gilb (Grove Press)
In ten beautifully crafted stories set in L.A., Albuquerque, and El Paso, Gilb explores the mystery and wonder of men's attraction to women. A department store clerk wrestles with temptation on the job, an El Paso seductress lures a man through a wild night on the town, an itinerant laborer gets more than he bargained for when he rents a run down apartment, a working class man and wife balance love and family, a chance airport encounter between high school friends reminds us of the power of spontaneity and passion, a housesitter wrestles with lust and love, a middle-class couple learn a lesson in art appreciation from their Chicano housebuilder, a casual pick-up turns into something deeper, a struggling writer encounters a lustful Amazon, and an Indian drifter finds himself an object of attention in New York City. Lush with language and passion, these tales of brief encounters and enduring love glow with vitality. The exquisite woodcuts by Artemio Rodriquez are a bonus.
Also selected:
- Edward Abbey: A Life
- Goats: A Novel
- Pie Town Woman: The Hard Life and Good Times of a New Mexico Homesteader
- A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet
- Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde
- Understanding the Arizona Constitution