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In California’s Heartland, a New Resistance Movement is Taking Root By Mark Arax I confess I haven’t managed to finish reading any books lately, but have several I will finish soon. In the meantime, I’d like to recommend this article about Fresno, California, by Mark Arax. (The link will get you past the paywall.) Arax…
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After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican War, the U.S. acquired much of the present southwestern states. But aside from Hispanic presence in New Mexico, the interior west still belonged largely to the indigenous people who had occupied it for centuries. The California and Colorado gold rushes…
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With Judith Schiess Avila Around 2017, I was working on field surveys for a water pipeline to serve the Navajo Nation, running from the La Plata River to Window Rock, Arizona, via Shiprock and Gallup, New Mexico. While we were crossing one property, the owner, a Navajo, came to talk with us. He told us…
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Hold out your hands and let me lay upon them a sheaf of freshly picked sweetgrass … Hold the bundle up to your nose. Find the fragrance of honeyed vanilla over the scent of river water and black earth and you understand its scientific name: Hierochloe odorata, meaning the fragrant, holy grass.” With this opening…
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Wingate has conjured a moving tale from the horrific headlines of yesteryear. Set during the Great Depression, it pits the rich and powerful against the poor and powerless, aided by a truly malignant force by the name of Georgia Tann. Tann was, unfortunately, a real person, and the true extent of her cruel crimes will…
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I have not read Brooks’s previous books, one of which won a Pulitzer. (Not necessarily a selling point for me.) This one I enjoyed tremendously. It is historical fiction based on real people and events, at least in the portions set in the distant past. The present-day scenes I would guess are purely fictional. Is…
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Goodwin is a historian, genealogist, and accomplished writer. This book is part of his Morton Farrier genealogical mystery series. The books are all set primarily in England, being as Goodwin is British. The books can be read in any order, but there is a thread through all the books pertaining to Morton’s personal life and…
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This story is set in the wilderness of sub-Hudson Bay, Canada, and involves two best friends on a late-season, multi-week canoe journey to the bay. In a sense, this is a retelling of Deliverance, a fact which is boldly stated in the narrative itself. But The River is more than just a buddy-adventure survival story.…
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Last year I decided to rectify my scanty knowledge of the classics. I read a number of them in high school: Heart of Darkness by Conrad, Return of the Native by Hardy, King Lear (and other plays) by Shakespeare. Then there was the one that led to open rebellion, that I refused to finish on…
Eilene Lyon 