Southwest Books of the Year
Bruce Dinges Picks
Wild Girl, The: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932
Fergus employs an actual incident in depression-era Douglas, Arizona as the springboard for his adventurous novel chronicling the adventures of a 17-year-old photographer as he accompanies a gentlemen’s expedition in search of the lost Apaches of the Sierra Madre. By turns humorous and poignant, it is both a classic coming-of-age tale and a sensitive exploration of cultural differences and the common humanity that we all share. This compulsively readable book has the earmarks of a southwestern classic.
Diezmo, The
The ill-fated 1842 Texan-Mier expedition forms the canvas for this beautifully rendered portrait of men at war. Impelled by visions of honor and glory, the book’s 16-year-old narrator sets out on a patriotic adventure that dissolves in hardship, horror, and recrimination in Mexican prisons. The diezmo (10th part)—the famous “black bean” episode in which one in ten of the expedition captives was selected for execution—underscores the capriciousness of warfare, even as captors and captives discover common bonds of humanity and barbarity. Bass’s trademark feel for language and deft plotting transform this slender historical novel into a rich exploration of universal truth.
109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos
During WWII, scientists and military personnel funneled unobtrusively through a nondescript office at 109 East Palace Street in Santa Fe to the top-secret facility at Los Alamos, where they worked feverishly to develop the atomic bomb. Journalist Conant plumbs gatekeeper Dorothy McKibbin’s unpublished memoir and other reminiscences to produce an eye-opening account of the dedicated men and women who raced to advance the boundaries of science and defeat tyranny. Oppenheimer, the charismatic physicist who administered the herculean bomb project, appropriately occupies center stage in the story, but Conant’s lasting accomplishment is reconstructing the day-to-day lives of individuals.
No Country For Old Men
McCarthy amazes with this elegant and provocative rumination on greed and violence set in the modern-day West Texas borderlands. A drug deal gone bad sends an old-school county sheriff in pursuit of the bystander who walked off with a suitcase stuffed with money, and the stone-cold assassin grimly determined to retrieve it. McCarthy presents an apocalyptic vision of frontier values at odds with a society devouring itself. In addition to his trademark fascination with graphic violence, there is an uncanny ear for dialogue. This brilliantly crafted novel reminds us why Cormac McCarthy stands in the front rank of American writers.
Hummingbird’s Daughter, The
There is magic in Urrea’s pen. In this epic novel he tells the story of Teresita, the legendary saint of Cabora, and her spreading fame as a healer in Porfirio Diaz’s Mexico where she emerges as both symbol of hope for the common people and perhaps a threat to the status quo. As her spiritual power grows, she forms a relationship with the man who fathered and abandoned her. Through Urrea’s gifted hands, the result is a book that is both a brilliant portrait of a nation in turmoil and a deeply personal story of faith and reconciliation.
Oatman Massacre, The: A Tale of Desert Captivity and Survival
For all the incident’s lurid sensationalism, it’s remarkable that it has taken 150 years for a historian to present a full and dispassionate account of the 1851 massacre of the Oatman family in southwestern Arizona, and its aftermath. Worth the wait. McGinty has mined archival materials and published sources to produce a compulsively readable narrative of the dissident Mormon family’s trek westward, their fatal encounter with Indians along the Gila River, and young Olive Oatman’s seven-year captivity and eventual return to white society. He strips away layers of myth and conjecture to explore Victorian Americans’ attitudes about themselves and toward Native Americans.
Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women
Pauly, an English professor, is the first person to have full access to Grey’s personal correspondence. He takes advantage of the opportunity in this revealing biography of the Ohio dentist whose best-selling novels of the 1920s, mainly set in southern Utah and northern Arizona, defined the romantic West in the popular mind. Grey emerges as a complex individual who battled depression, indulged in multiple affairs, and spent lavishly on outdoor activities. Grey suffered at the hands of literary critics, but his influence on popular culture is undeniable. He has long deserved a serious biography. Pauly’s book serves him well.
Voice of the Borderlands
Drum Hadley is the real thing—an accomplished poet who has spent his adult life as a working cowboy and rancher. In this impressive collection, he paints a lush portrait of the Arizona/New Mexico/Sonora borderlands viewed through his own keen eyes, and related in the stories of the men with whom he has ridden the ridges and canyons of the Guadalupe Mountains and Mexico’s Sierra Madre. The voices convey a sense of awe and wonder, sprinkled with an earthy sense of humor, at man’s stubborn persistence in an unforgiving land. Spoon River has its Edgar Lee Masters; the Guadalupes have Drum Hadley.
About Bruce Dinges