Books & Reading
Southwest Books of the Year
Southwest Books of the Year 2004 - Best Reading
Bailing Wire & Gamuza: The True Story of a Family Ranch Near Ramah, New Mexico, 1905-1986
by Barbara Vogt Mallery. Foreword by John Nichols. New Mexico Magazine.
Evon Z. Vogt brought his bride to his small ranch near Ramah, on the edge of the Navajo Reservation, near the beginning of the 20th century. Born there in 1920, the author returned after an active life and relived the joy of her youth in the photographs, letters, and memories she found. Weathering the Great Depression was not easy, but the Vogt family survived, helping and being helped by their Navajo neighbors. Later, there were famous visitors: Frederick Webb Hodge, Charles F. Lummis, and Clyde Kluckhohn, to name a few. Mallery brings it all to life with nearly three dozen photos and an excellent sense of the people and events that made life worth living.
Review by David Laird
Also selected by Richard Quartaroli and Steven Phillips
Assembling My Father: A Daughters Detective Story
by Anna Cypra Oliver. Houghton Mifflin.
The author was five in 1974, when her father put a gun to his head and killed himself in Taos, New Mexico. He was 35. Anna knew that he was the son of a prominent New York Jewish family, that he married her mother in the late sixties, and that they struck out for Taos to live as hippies. The marriage was short-lived. Her mother adopted a redneck Christian fundamentalist lifestyle, which involved three marriages to abusive men. Many years later, Anna began to wonder who her real father was. Interviews with classmates, friends, and relatives, along with meticulous research, combine to produce a fascinating story.
Review by Patricia Etter
Also selected by David Laird
The Books of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River, the Green River & the Colorado Plateau, 1953-2003, a Selective Bibliography
by Mike S. Ford. Fretwater Press.
Ford ploughed through the massive accumulation of publications from the past 50 years concerning the geographical area of the titles and chose 125 items as the best. Short, pithy annotations explain each selection.
Review by David Laird
Also Selected by Richard Quartaroli
¡Caramba!: A Tale Told in Turns of the Card
by Nina Marie Martinez. Knopf.
"All of the sudden," this riotous novel takes off. Lucha becomes fatherless at the age of nine, when "the machine that places the small but sturdy staple at the end of the chorizo went wild, pumping Lucio, head of quality control in the chorizo department at The Sausage Factory, full of the metal stapling devices. . . . "Small constellation that is," said Conseulo. Consuelo spoke English and Spanish, but neither to perfection. . . . "Besides, all that typin might lead to carpal trouble." " Thelma and Louise on the border, with a lot of Lucy and Ethel thrown in. Be prepared to laugh out loud.
Review by Richard Quartaroli
Also selected by Patricia Etter
Indian Country: Travels in the American Southwest, 1840-1935
by Martin Padget. University of New Mexico Press.
This book was both less and much more than I expected. With a title of Indian Country, I expected a collection of colorful accounts of the lives and traditions of southwestern Indians prior to 1935. What I found was a very thought-provoking examination of how explorers such as John Wesley Powell, writers Charles F. Lummis and Helen Hunt Jackson, and artists such as Elbridge Ayer Burbank, played a significant role in shaping the public's perception of this distinctive region of the country, and how their often distorted, Eurocentric views changed, even molded, the lives of Indians.
Review by Steven Phillips
Also selected by Richard Quartaroli
Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman
by Kristie Miller. University of Arizona Press.
As a New York debutante and close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, it would appear that Isabella Selmes had it all when she married Bob Ferguson, a former Rough Rider and manager of the John J. Astor Trust. Ferguson's poor health sent them to New Mexico. A second marriage to copper magnate John Greenway, whom she had loved from afar for many years, brought her to Arizona. His untimely death left her to manage his business interests, including an airline. Eleanor Roosevelt recruited her to work for the Democratic Convention, and she seconded the nomination of Franklin Roosevelt. Not long after, she was the first and only Arizona woman elected to Congress.
Review by Patricia Etter
Also selected by David Laird
Waterborne: A Novel
by Bruce Murkoff. Knopf.
This superbly written, ambitious book follows the lives of three tortured souls: Filius Poe, an engineer from a privileged background trying to escape a profound personal tragedy, Lena McCardell, a young woman shaken to the core when her husband's secret life is revealed, and Lew Beck, a vindictive roughneck who leaves a trail of misery in his endless quest for self-acceptance. The story culminates in the Nevada desert in the 1930s during the construction of the Hoover Dam. What emerges is an epic tale of humankind's quest to conquer nature and tame the beasts that ravage the soul.
Review by Steven Phillips
Also chosen by David Laird