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Books
Reviewed This Month:
• Coyote's Wife: An Ella Clah Novel
• No Settlement, No Conquest: A History of the Coronado Entrada
• A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene
• Myth of the Hanging Tree: Stories of Crime and Punishment in Territorial New Mexico
• Photographing Albuquerque: The Best Sights and How to Photograph Them
• Mustang: The Sage of the Wild Horse in the American West
• Willard Clark: Printer & Printmaker
Guest Review by Wolf Schneider
FictionCoyote's Wife: An Ella Clah Novel
ByAimée and David Thurlo
Forge Hardcover/A Tom Doherty Associates Book, http://us.macmillan.com/forge,
352 pages, hardcover, $24.95
Navajo Tribal Police Special Investigator Ella Clah is back for her 13th go-round in this Navajo Reservation mystery, which finds Ella solving a string of murders and attacks that are somehow linked to a family-owned business.
No one seems to like Ervin Benally, his wife, Barbara, or his manipulative mother-in-law, Abigail, who collectively run StarTalk, a reservation-based firm intent on expanding its satellite-phone business. At the book’s start, Benally was supposed to be gathering firewood with a poor fellow who’s found dead among the pines and scrub oaks in the remote Chuska Mountains of northwestern New Mexico. Pretty soon it’s clear to Ella that Benally is being repeatedly targeted for witchcraft, and probably worse. Why would a sat-phone business create such a stir? Wrong question. This rash of crimes is personal.
The themes of business being more personal than “just business,” and of shifting relationships in sparsely populated areas such as Navajoland, run throughout the novel. Call it social claustrophobia —it’s just small-town reality. That’s why Ella’s daughter’s sudden scholarship turns out to be more than a coincidence.
Coyote’s Wife captures this everyone-knows-everyone-else’s-business web of split loyalties. As always with books in this series, the police-procedural aspects ring true, as do the characters, and the plot is believable. The Navajo concept of maintaining order and harmony is thoughtfully considered, as when a member of the activist group Fierce Ones taunts, “You can’t let murderers and thieves go free just because Anglo laws have a million loopholes.” Ella retorts, “All the Fierce Ones do is terrorize.”
However, the dialogue is not quite as snappy, and Ella’s inner life is not as fully developed, as they were in Mourning Dove and Wind Spirit, in which Corrales-based authors Aimée and David Thurlo set the bar high with psychological depth and their insiders’ knowledge of the rez, where David grew up.
That said, Coyote’s Wife proves a likable and trustworthy foray into rugged terrain the authors know well, where “An old green pickup was parked near an empty sheep pen, and smoke was coming from the chimney of the hogan-style building.” Here businessmen wear bolo ties, cops wear animal fetishes, and hataaliis (medicine men) such as Ella’s brother Clifford restore harmony with blessing ceremonies that include arrowheads, turquoise, and white shells tossed in the air. All in all, it’s a world very much worth knowing about.
Guest reviewer Wolf Schneider has been editor in chief of the Santa Fean, editor of Living West, and consulting editor at Southwest Art.
Reviews by Charles Bennett and Amber Avalona
HistoryNo Settlement, No Conquest: A History of the Coronado Entrada
By Richard Flint
University of New Mexico Press, www.unmpress.com, 376 pages, hardcover, $29.95
No Settlement, No Conquest summarizes and shines new light on the 1539–1542 expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, probably the best-known Spanish land exploration, and the first organized, European-led incursion into what is now northwestern Mexico and the Southwestern United States. To date, there has been no better-written capsule history of this expedition.
New Mexico archaeologist and author Richard Flint and his team members researched the Coronado entrada (an exploration of new territory) for 26 years. Flint and his wife and close collaborator, Shirley Cushing Flint, have published four other major works on the Coronado Expedition.
The most surprising fact to be gleaned from the book is that Coronado’s expedition was not seeking gold or minerals, as is commonly believed. Rather, their intention was to make contact with the local natives, force them to submit to outside rule, then receive tribute from them through material wealth, products, and/or slavery. This concept of encomienda, or the right to collect labor from an indigenous community, is key to any understanding of the Coronado Expedition, Flint states.
Remember that the Coronado Expedition took place just 18 years after the conquest of the Mexica/Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, today’s Mexico City, and the awarding by Hernando Cortés of some 313 encomiendas to his faithful conquistadors, amid rumors of an even more lucrative area in the far north referred to as Cíbola. It’s no wonder, then, that the Coronado Expedition’s members privately funded the exploration, fully expecting to recoup their investments in the form of encomiendas.
What they found was not the land full of prosperous natives they’d expected and planned to subjugate. In his final report to King Carlos I, Coronado considered the central Río Grande area the “best place” he had seen, though still unfit for Spanish settlement.
This book ties a tidy bow on the Coronado entrada, deflating all the myths surrounding it and explaining it in highly readable language. The endnoted volume includes seven maps, appendices that include a list of all major Spanish expeditions in the Western Hemisphere between 1492 and 1598, a chronological context of the Coronado entrada, a glossary of pertinent Spanish terms, and a thorough index.
—Charles Bennett
A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene
Edited By Susan McAllister, Don McIver, Mikela Renz, Daniel S. Solis
University of New Mexico Press, www.unmpress.com, 248 pages,
paperback with CD, $21.95
In poetry slams, authors read or recite original work to an audience in a form of performance art. Audience-selected judges then rate these performances on a numeric scale. Originally devised by a Chicago poet in 1984, poetry slams have proved popular, and now take place in bars and coffee shops nationwide.
A Bigger Boat is an interesting mix of essays interspersed with poetry written by the principals responsible for nurturing Albuquerque’s poetry-slam scene and winning the 2005 National Poetry Slam competition. It will stand in the future as an important record of this modern manifestation of the ancient tradition of performance poetry. The accompanying CD contains performances of 17 poems by individuals and teams, as well as radio spots for the National Poetry Slam.—C.B.
Old New MexicoMyth of the Hanging Tree: Stories of Crime and Punishment in Territorial New Mexico
By Robert J. Tórrez
University of New Mexico Press, www.unmpress.com, 196 pages, paperback, $19.95
Despite its morbid title, this is a good, solid history of law and order in the Territory of New Mexico from 1846–1912. Author Robert J. Tórrez, a former president of the Historical Society of New Mexico and state historian for the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, has for decades studied the primary records of criminal cases stored in the New Mexico state archives. (His feature story, “Deadly Days of Chama,” appeared in the January 2008 issue of New Mexico Magazine.) In this latest book, Tórrez presents 11 stories representing the sort of justice meted out during New Mexico’s turbulent Territorial period.
One story demonstrates Tórrez’s aplomb for historical documentation: Basing his retelling on oral histories and secondary sources, he recounts the story of Paula Angel, a well-known convict who stabbed her lover after he jilted her. Angel was sentenced to hang in Las Vegas, and, until the author’s research, posthumously enjoyed the dubious distinction of being the only woman ever hanged in New Mexico. The first attempt to hang Angel didn’t work: Her arms had been left unsecured, and she tried to pull herself up from the noose. When the sheriff frantically tugged her down, still alive, the crowd interceded and cut her loose from the noose, feeling justice had been served—technically, after all, she had been hanged. But she was then hanged again, this time with her hands tied, and this time until dead. Although Paula Angel was long thought to be the only woman ever hanged in New Mexico, Tórrez’s thorough research has dispelled this rumor. In this fascinating piece of historical research, he consistently disassembles this and other cases, separating facts from fiction. —C.B.
Photographing Albuquerque: The Best Sights and How to Photograph Them—Over 200 Photos You Can Take!
By Kim Ashley
Aardvark Global Publishing Company, www.kimashleyphotos.com, 72 pages, paperback, $12
This little book by Albuquerque-based professional photographer Kim Ashley takes readers to the best photo sites in the Duke City and its immediate vicinity, and provides tips on how to turn ordinary shots into fine art. The book is in three parts: the first orients the reader to the Top 10 photo sites and events in Albuquerque, the second describes eight area day trips, and the third is a tutorial in digital photography. Ashley has sprinkled a welcome seasoning of photography tips throughout the book —it’s not every day that the amateur can get advice from a professional about the best camera settings, depth of field, f-stops, and the like. For the reader’s convenience, Ashley provides hours of operation, fees, driving directions, website URLs, and phone numbers for the destinations he recommends, making this modest photography guide even more helpful.—C.B.
OutdoorsMustang: The Sage of the Wild Horse in the American West
By DeAnne Stillman
Houghton Mifflin Company, www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com, 352 pages,
hardcover, $25
The mustang symbolizes the wildness and freedom of the American West. Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West takes the reader on an anecdotal, chronological analysis of the horse’s role in America’s settlement, then moves on to horses in the public eye: those that took part in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, in films, and in television shows. The last of the book’s three sections brings the reader up to modern times, discussing recent roundups and removals of mustangs, including the horrendous slaughter of 34 horses in 1998, near Reno, that prompted Stillman to write the book, as well as other contemporary issues, almost all of which disadvantage these animals.
Mustang details an epic journey replete with a large cast of characters human and equine. Researched over a period of 10 years, it’s packed with information, despite some fuzzy history here and there.
But Stillman’s underlying message is loud and clear: The wild horses of the West deserve protection. She even calls for a temporary moratorium on roundups of wild mustangs until scientific studies of the animals in their habitats can be conducted. Stillman is a well-established Los Angeles writer whose critically acclaimed bestseller Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave was published in 2001.—C.B.
Art
Willard Clark: Printer & Printmaker
By David Farmer
Museum of New Mexico Press, www.mnmpress.org, 95 pages, hardcover, $34.95
Chances are you’ve seen artist Willard Clark’s handiwork in a prominent public place. His woodblock of a burro-pulled cart in an adobe village graced the cover of the Santa Fean’s first issue in 1940 (a different incarnation from the Santa Fean founded by Marion Love and Betty Bauer in 1972 and still on newsstands today). “He called his business Clark’s Studio, a name befitting the work of an artist rather than a job printer, and established himself as a member of the community of painters, poets, and writers that began to take root in Santa Fe,” writes Taos-based author David Farmer.
After Clark migrated here from the East, his bar menus, flyers, brochures, cards, catalogs, and the like reflected his unique take on the Southwest. Often, the artist behind commercial art can go unnoticed; Willard Clark: Printer & Printmaker credits a man who helped to shape New Mexico’s public image in the early to mid–20th century (Clark died in 1992).—Amber Avalona
