Books & Reading
Southwest Books of the Year
Best Reading
Blanket Weaving in the Southwest
Joe Ben Wheat, edited by Ann Lane Hedlund. University of Arizona Press. 440pp. $75.
There are truly two lifetimes of study, assimilation, and integration in this, the late Joe Ben Wheat's magnum opus, for editor Hedlund is herself a world-renowned expert on southwestern Native American weaving, with numerous books and exhibit catalogs to her credit. Here the editing seems flawless, permitting Wheat's knowledge to show at its best. In addition to nearly 200 color plates with full technical descriptions, Wheat's texts are virtually mini-glossaries or mini-histories under such headings as Weaves or Design or Colors or Fibers and Yarns. Not intended nor appropriate for a beginning collector or reader with only a general interest, this is, nonetheless, one of the most important books on southwestern weaving published in recent decades.
-W. David Laird
also chosen by Quartaroli and Phillips
Brownsville: Stories
Oscar Casares. Back Bay Books (Little Brown & Co.). 192pp. $13.95.
In this auspicious debut collection of short stories set in the author's hometown, Casares explores with wit and imagination themes of friendship, loss, and identity played out in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. A boy learns a hard lesson about dignity and work, a borrowed hammer opens a chasm between neighbors, a monkey's head creates a rift between a young man and his parents, an old man wrestles with years of sorrow over a lost daughter, the theft of her cherry-red bowling ball transforms a widow's life. The locale is particular, but the themes are universal and the stories are honestly told. The winner of the James Michener Award and a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, Casares is a voice to be reckoned with in southwestern letters.
-Bruce Dinges
also chosen by Laird and Etter
Las Misiones Antiguas: The Spanish Missions of Baja California
Edward W. Vernon. University of New Mexico Press. 288pp. $44.95.
A splendid book! The photographic essay introduces Jesuit, Franciscan, and Dominican missions, some 34 of them, built with the Herculean efforts of the friars and the indigenous Natives between 1683 and 1834. The grandiose plans of the padres - to have churches surrounded by villages with productive fields - failed miserably, and by the late 1700s many missions were abandoned since hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, revolts, and disease contributed to a rapid decline of population. A detailed map on the inside cover identifies and locates the mission sites, ruins, and visitas, each of which was visited, photographed, and located by GPS. In addition, he includes sketches of ground plans. Because actual preservation of remaining sites is questionable, this book will be an invaluable resource for future scholars. Vernon concludes that "the effects on the Indians of the padres' efforts and the spiritual and cultural benefits of Baja, California's missionization are left to the reader to ponder."
-Patricia Etter
also chosen by Laird and Phillips
The Parrot Trainer
Swain Wolfe. St. Martin's Press. 288pp. $24.95.
This rollicking, screwball novel follows the adventures (and misadventures) of an odd assortment of characters, including a tough-as-nails former professional pot hunter who spends his retirement sculpting huge, melting mud men, a rakish, pompous French theorist who's a bit too fond of the bottle, a young archaeologist struggling with issues of ethics and love, and a beautiful spirit goddess that may be nothing more than a venom-induced hallucination - but then again, maybe not. Add in a hidden cache of priceless Mimbres artifacts, a 10,000-year-old frozen body in an Alaskan glacier, a troublesome independent film crew, and a couple of ruffians called Rat and Raw Bone and you have the ingredients for a first-class southwestern archaeological thriller.
-Steven Phillips
Also chosen by Laird and Quartaroli
American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows
Sally Denton. Alfred Knopf. 306pp. $26.95.
Although a book about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Blood of the Prophets by Will Bagley, made last year's list, Denton's is by no means redundant. Where some might find the former daunting, they will discover the latter entirely accessible. A well-written, easily readable version, it is still not easy to understand the justification for the disturbing events that took place at Mountain Meadows. An excellent companion piece, Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, leads to the "extremes of religious belief within our own borders." Try intermingling the reading of both books for an interesting juxtaposition of related times and events.
-Richard Quartaroli
also selected by Dinges
Guaymas Chronicles: La Mandadera: El Guero on the Streets of Northwest Mexico
David E. Stuart. University of New Mexico Press. 389pp. $24.95.
In the 1980s, the author - an anthropology professor - took a writing class from Tony Hillerman at the University of New Mexico. We don't know the grade he received, but judging from this polished memoir of his adventures as a young graduate student in Guaymas, Mexico, we can assume he did all right. Drawing on his journals and recollections, Stuart describes in engaging detail the collapse of his relationship with a local girl and his subsequent life as El Güero ("Whitey") among the hustlers and street people in the Sonoran port during the late 1960s and early 1970s. His clear eye for detail and assured sense of pacing hold readers' attention as he chronicles his life as a contraband runner and as a facilitator for Americans in Mexico. The most affecting part of this unique story, however, revolves around Stuart's relationship with a feisty, street-smart shoeshine girl who becomes his messenger ("la mandadera") and, eventually, his surrogate daughter. Stuart's self-effacing memoir opens a fascinating window on a hidden, and now lost, Mexico that few Americans have had the opportunity to experience, much less record with so much empathy and insight.
-Bruce Dinges
also chosen by Laird
Exit Wounds: A Novel of Suspense
J.A. Jance. William Morrow. 368pp. $24.95.
When Carol Mossman's bullet-ridden body is discovered in a locked, airless trailer along with 17 dogs who expired with her, Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady is called in to solve the case. Complications set in with the discovery of the bodies of two women, who had been shot, bound, and left naked on a remote ranch. All three women had been killed with 86-year-old bullets of the same caliber. Is a serial killer on the loose? Who would do this and why? Sheriff Brady has her hands full pursuing a sadistic murderer as long-held secrets of a local family begin to emerge. To complicate the tale, the Sheriff is facing a brutal re-election campaign while suffering from a severe case of morning sickness. Yes, our favorite sheriff is pregnant.
-Patricia Etter
also chosen by Dinges
Battle Rock: The Struggle Over a One-Room School in America's Vanishing West
William Celis. Public Affairs Books. 256pp. $25.
Stephen Hanson, a well-traveled "ex-hippie" educator, took on the job of principal/teacher at a one-room school in Colorado's remote McElmo Canyon. It was more than he bargained for. The simple farming and ranching life in the canyon was being forever transformed by a steady stream of urban escapees who had values, attitudes, and intentions that were frequently at odds with those of long-time residents. As Hanson soon learned, the school often served as the battleground between these two groups. Author William Celis spent one academic year (1999-2000) immersing himself in the day-to-day activities of the school and in the lives of many of the canyon's residents. The result is a book that is both enlightening and entertaining. Thinking about escaping the city for the simple, harmonious life in small town America? Read this book before you pack.
-Steven Phillips
also selected by Etter
The River in Winter: New and Selected Essays
Stanley Crawford. University of New Mexico Press. 170pp. $21.95.
This evocative collection of essays by author, gardener, philosopher Stanley Crawford captures the essence of life in northern New Mexico like few other books. He throws a wide net, examining everything from the beauty of dirt floors and flat stones to the constant battles over water rights. Crawford skillfully exposes both the bright and dark sides of living in a small community: cooperation, participation, shared power, and a sense of connection are counterbalanced by a passion for pettiness, gossiping, and feuding. He writes, "It is through our gossip, our telling of tales, through our collective village novel that we will finally establish that we live at the center of the universe - however insignificant this small place may seem to the great wide world."
-Steven Phillips
also chosen by Etter
The Mountains Know Arizona: Images of the Land and Stories of Its People
Rose Houk, photographs by Michael Collier. Arizona Highways Books. 272pp. $39.95.
About ten years ago, Rose Houk and Michael Collier combined talents to produce books about the Great Smoky Mountains and White Sands National Monument. Traveling 30,000 miles over two years, their collaborative focus this time is ten Arizona ranges, some of the geography and geology of the high areas of the state. Collier's photographs, including a few of his classic aerials that the editor allowed, either make you want to travel to their location or else serve as a fine substitute for not being able to. But it's not just the physical and biological aspects portrayed, for Houk's evocative narration takes you on their journey yet allows your imagination to tag along.
-Richard Quartaroli
also chosen by Etter
The Changing Mile Revisited: An Ecological Study of Vegetation Change with Time in the Lower Mile of an arid and Semi-Arid Region
Raymond M. Turner, Robert H. Webb, Janice E. Bowers, James Rodney Hastings. University of Arizona Press. 334pp. $75.
The original Changing Mile, published in 1965, set a standard for the use of repeat photography in the study of ecosystem change. This volume, which adds three decades of data to the former book, uses 295 photographs taken at 98 photo stations to show the effects of climate and cultural stresses on the landscape of southern Arizona, Mexico's Pinacate region, and the coast of the Gulf of California over the last century. Even readers with limited interest in the subject matter will enjoy perusing the hundreds of historic photographs and noting changes and patterns.
-Steven Phillips
also chosen by Quartaroli