Books & Reading
Southwest Books of the Year
Best Reading
Madam Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan
by Max Evans
Based largely on interviews, novelist Evans tells the rollicking true story of Mildred Cusey, a resourceful orphan, former Harvey Girl, and astute businesswoman who for nearly a half century lived happily and well off the wages of sin. Prostitution was, and is, a fact of life, but unvarnished accounts from women involved in the trade are exceedingly rare. By any standard, Millie was a remarkable woman whose biography, told in her own unvarnished words, provides entertaining reading, as well as a rare glimpse of how the world's oldest profession operated in the twentieth-century Southwest.
- Bruce Dinges
Also selected by Phillips, Bock and Laird
Red Water: A Novel
by Judith Freeman
In poignant versions, three of the 19 wives of southern Utah Mormon settler John D. Lee recount their lives as members of a polygamist pioneer's households in the harsh, yet austerely beautiful landscape. From their individual perspectives, they sketchily reveal events surrounding the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 for which Lee was tried and executed 20 years later. But more compelling in this fictional account are the revelations of their struggles and the complex, unsettling nature of the man they loved. Freeman's research into the bloody deaths of "Gentile" wagon train members, including women and children, at the hands of Mormons with Indians' complicity reveal much about Mormon faith and lifestyle.
- Deborah Bock
The Desert Cries: A Season of Flash Floods in a Dry Land
by Craig Childs
"Seeing a flood," writes author Craig Childs, "catches God red-handed. A flood constitutes an act of such creation and destruction, of such raw energy, that you cannot avert your eyes." The Desert Cries describes the gripping story of five such floods that took 22 lives in Arizona deserts between August and September, 1997. Childs (The Secret Knowledge of Water) claims that he wrote these pieces not to be read as disaster stories or cautionary tales but rather "to reveal a furious and elegant beast that few people ever get to see." This slim volume takes readers into the mouth of this beast and once again demonstrates Childs' gift for storytelling and his uncommon ability to bring desert ecology to life. A gem of a book.
-Steven Phillips
Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
by Will Bagley
Bagley literally leaves no stone unturned in this exhaustively researched and compellingly written expose of Mormonism's dark secret, the September 11, 1857, massacre of Arkansas emigrants at Mountain Meadows in southwestern Utah. Relying on a wealth of documents uncovered since the publication of Juanita Brooks' classic Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1950, he deftly traces the rise of Mormonism and explains the circumstances that doomed the ill-fated Fancher party, while dramatically recreating the Mountain Meadows tragedy and astutely assessing the guilt of John D. Lee, Brigham Young, and others. More important, Bagley firmly fixes the killing of innocent men, women, and children within the context of Mormon and U.S. history, showing how "the murders at Mountain Meadows raise larger questions about the human condition, particularly how decent men can, while acting on their best and firmest beliefs, commit a great evil."
-Bruce Dinges
Down By the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family
by Charles Bowden
Bowden established his credentials as an investigative reporter with his first book, then added to his renown during years of newspaper and journal reporting while producing 9 more books of non-fiction essays plus a co-authored biography of Arizona's Charles Keating and the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. This new book brings to bear all the skills learned and earned so far. Based on interviews with people at all levels of the drug trade (users, dealers, cartel bosses, police and enforcement officials, family members of victims murdered because of some involvement), the picture he draws of the war on drugs in the U.S. and in Mexico will make you think he might have written the screenplay for 2000's hit movie Traffic. A powerful book painting an ugly picture.
- W. David Laird
Lalo: My Life and Music
by Lalo Guerrero and Sherilyn Meece Mentes
Lalo Guerrero, who is still giving concerts at 85 years of age, was a major force in Latin music during the 1950s and 1960s. Born on Christmas Eve 1916, Guerrero spent a humble yet happy childhood in Tucson's Barrio Viejo. His musical aspirations took him to Los Angeles where he mastered many styles: from boleros, salsas and mambos to swing and children's songs. His music was heard even in South America, although wider distribution and acceptance was hindered by prejudice against his Mexican American roots. Through both the triumphs and setbacks Guerrero remained steadfast in his commitment to his music, and surprisingly free from rancor and bitterness. Ghostwriter Sherilyn Meece Mentes has done a splendid job of capturing the personality of Lalo and making the life and times of this honest, spirited, gifted man of interest to all readers.
-Steven Phillips
Landscape of the Spirits: Hohokam Rock Art at South Mountain Park
by Todd W. Bostwick
Phoenix city archaeologist Bostwick covers new territory in rock art literature by cataloging the sites and symbols of Hohokam petroglyphs, specifically in the city's South Mountain Park. After introductions to the region and to the study and dating of rock art, Bostwick structures the chapters primarily by types of design elements. Color photographs by Peter Krocek and drawings by the photographer and the author add exciting, essential components. A major addition to Southwest rock art studies for this region, Bostwick's work will appeal to both rock art enthusiasts seeking sites to explore as well as armchair archaeologists searching for identification and possible elucidation to the enigmatic symbols found in central and southern Arizona.
-Deborah Bock
Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest
by Sandra Day O'Connor and H. Alan Day
In this gently reflective memoir, Supreme Court Justice O'Connor and her brother recall their childhood on the family's sprawling ranch in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. As the third, and as it turns out, final, generation of the Day family to work the Lazy B, the pair trace the ranch's history from its hardscrabble beginnings when their grandfather established grazing rights in the 1880s through hardearned prosperity in the 1940s and fifties. But what makes the book shine are the well-told stories of the Days and a handful of memorable cowboys who made large virtues out of small necessities and who lived committed lives of rugged self-reliance. Future biographers will find described here the people and events that shaped the character of the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, while the rest of us enjoy a classic account of ranch life in the modern-day Southwest.
-Bruce Dinges
The Lessening Stream: An Environmental History of the Santa Cruz River
by Michael F. Logan
One of the better balanced works of history, where subject is not merely related in a generally chronological order but is brought out and discussed within a time related cultural content, so one has a rather interesting history of the southwestern states and a portion of northwestern Mexico. It is this broader, regional setting which provides Logan with the stage for dealing most importantly with the aquifer(s) along the course of the Santa Cruz. The river itself ceased to flow as a perennial stream a long time ago, and many of us have a very general idea of why. Without assuming the tone of a crusade, Michael Logan weaves anthropology and detailed modern history into the hydrology and geology of the river to provide a comprehensive and inclusive picture of what can happen to a freshwater system when that system is subject to uses by those who do not understand it or choose to ignore it. Michel F. Logan is an associate professor of history at Oklahoma State University.
-Norman Whaley
Sonoran Desert Wildflowers
by Richard Spellenberg
For many Sonoran Desert wildflower enthusiasts Anne Orth Epple's A Guide to the Plants of Arizona has served as the reference book of choice. It now may have to share that honor. This new field guide describes 300 common flowering plants found largely in the U.S. portion of the Sonoran Desert. Organized by flower color, each entry includes common and scientific names, family, a brief description, flowering season, habitat/range, comments, and a color photograph of the plant in bloom. While certainly not comprehensive - there are more than 3500 plants in the six subdivisions of the Sonoran Desert - it will help identify the plants people are most likely to encounter while exploring the natural areas of southern Arizona and southwestern California. My only disappointment is that the book didn't include more information on the uses of these native plants
.-Steven Phillips
The Underground Heart: A Return to a Hidden Landscape
by Ray Gonzalez
Gonzalez spent most of the last 20 years somewhere other than his native country, the Southwest, and in these essays, he returns to discover much that has changed while other things seem eternal. Reading a Gonzalez essay is a bit like talking about a shared, happy past with an old, good friend. Thoughts flow, images rise in the mind and drift by for consideration, events that once thrilled us or possibly evoked outrage get new appreciation. A book that will haunt you after you put it down while you wish it hadn't ended.
-W. David Laird