Reviewed This Month: • Soldier's Farewell • Sweet Nata • The Photographer's Guideto New Mexico • Images of America: Fred Harvey Houses of the Southwest • Caught Heart • To Walk in Beauty • Imperial Yellow

Guest Review by Tom Clagett

Western
Soldier's Farewell: A Western Story
By Johnny D. Boggs
Five Star
212 pages, hardcover, $25.95

Duty, honor, and a thirst for vengeance propel Soldier’s Farewell, the 45th novel by Santa Fe-based author Johnny D. Boggs, three-time Spur Award winner and New Mexico Magazine contributor. History and Old West enthusiasts, youngsters and adults, will find the grit and gumption of this tale as palpable as the harsh wind and dust of its Southwest setting.

The title refers to a desolate stagecoach relay station on the Butterfield line, operated by Conner Munro and his 11-year-old son Smith, in southern New Mexico Territory shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Conner, a surly Scot from Missouri by way of South Carolina, describes Soldier’s Farewell as “located 1,051 miles from Fort Smith, 460½ miles from Fort Yuma. And six inches to Perdition.”

Telling the story through Smith’s diary entries, Boggs ropes in the reader with the young man’s bitter first words, written on a loose note dated 1865 and stuck inside his diary: “Four years of hatred for my own flesh and blood. … Four years waiting for a war to end, waiting for my older brother to dare to show
his face.”

Smith begins his diary in 1860, and Boggs deftly maintains his hold on the reader’s attention with news from the East, brought by passengers and stage drivers, about the election of Abraham Lincoln, the threat of Southern secession, and civil war. Young Smith’s thorny temperament provides hardscrabble looks at hitching mules and serving up slumgullion stew (perhaps it’s a blessing we don’t know the ingredients), as well as the sudden violent outbursts between folks of differing viewpoints—such as the quiet Mr. Pinto, with cold green eyes, who calls a derringer-carrying dandy from Dallas a coward for high-tailing it out of Texas when war is declared.

Smith worries about how the war might affect his older brother, Julian, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, who had come through Soldier’s Farewell earlier, en route to his posting in California—after all, Julian considers himself a Southerner. Suddenly, big brother appears one day out of uniform, explaining cryptically that he has “new orders.” Smith’s concerns grow when Julian savagely beats hired hand Ben Jakes over a “Yankee” insult.
Soon enough, a rough, one-eyed Texican arrives at the station, followed by a man in a plaid suit who, Smith writes, talks “like his mouth is full of cornbread and molasses.” And just as you start to wonder what Boggs is up to, Smith records in his diary, “Big excitement when the Eastbound arrived this morning. … Then trouble. Big trouble.”

Following or betraying one’s loyalties and duties—and the consequences
of such choices—lie at the heart of this well-paced, action-filled, and surprisingly affecting story of the West.

Tom Clagett is a published author and member of Western Writers of America. He lives in Santa Fe.

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Book Briefs by Ashley M. Biggers

Memoir
Sweet Nata: Growing Up in Rural New Mexico
By Gloria Zamora
University of New Mexico
230 pages, hardcover, $24.95

Sweet Nata comprises more than 50 stories from the childhood of author and Corrales resident Gloria Zamora. From visiting tíos and tías and reading fortunes in coffee grounds, to attending funeral masses and hunting wild rabbits, each vignette of Zamora’s time with her grandparents, near Mora, provides an intimate glimpse of family life. When she is school-aged, Zamora returns to her parents’ home in Corrales, near Albuquerque, only to find her family members and life there unfamiliar. She adapts quickly—running across the fields and ditches with her dog, Tiger, in tow, and collecting Coke bottles with her friends to sell for penny candies—but she longs for her summers in Las Aguitas with her grandparents. By capturing the everyday moments of her childhood, Zamora has also captured snapshots of northern New Mexico’s cultural heritage and the unbreakable bonds between family members who
always love you “porque sí” (just because).

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Photography
The Photographer's Guide to New Mexico: Where to Find Perfect Shots and How to Take Them
By Efraín M. Padró
The Countryman Press
96 pages, paperback, $14.95

New Mexico is a photographer’s smorgasbord. As author and photographer Efraín M. Padró acknowledges in the introduction to his new book, photographers here can choose from a buffet of captivating land formations, architecture, colorful people, and, of course, “the state’s renowned beautiful, clear light.” Organized by geographic region, the guide lists the top photographic destinations for each area, ranging from natural sights like White Sands National Monument to cultural events like La Fiesta de Santa Fe. Each listing places the destination or event in historic and cultural context and provides tips on where and how to capture the best images. At one spot in Pecos National Historical Park, for example, Padró advises the photographer to “Use a wide-angle lens for this shot and get low to the ground to emphasize the round kiva. Because the mission and pueblo ruins are plain and mud-colored, look for interesting cloud formations to add interest to your compositions.” The helpful guide is suited for photography hobbyists and travelers wishing to regale their friends with envible images from their latest trip to the Land of Enchantment. All the tips come from someone in the know—Padró’s own travel images have appeared in publications including Frommer’s Budget Travel, Photo Life (Canada), and Bienvenidos Magazine (Puerto Rico), to name a few. He’s also a regular contributor to New Mexico Magazine. For info: www.padroimages.com

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History
Images of America: Fred Harvey Houses of the Southwest
By Richard Melzer
Arcadia Publishing
128 pages, paperback, $21.99

Bookshelves across the country are flush with volumes about the history of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. There are far fewer books about the Harvey Houses—the resorts, hotels, and high-quality restaurants, with courteous, attractive servers known as Harvey Girls, that dotted the AT&SF’s route across the American Southwest, beginning in the late 19th century.
University of New Mexico–Valencia history professor Richard Melzer remedies this oversight with his new book. Like every other entry in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series, Fred Harvey Houses of the Southwest presents a dynamic collection of more than 180 historic photographs with extended captions that detail the subject’s unique history. The book devotes sections to several Harvey Houses in New Mexico that are icons of local
architecture, including The Montezuma and La Castañeda hotels in Las Vegas, the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque, and La Fonda in Santa Fe. Although much of the book is focused on the buildings’ architecture and décor, equally fascinating are the stories and images of the Harvey Girls, the hotel guests (many of them film stars), and the couriers and Native American guides hired by Harvey. This gem captures and preserves a little-known aspect of the local heritage of many New Mexican communities and is well worth reading. Dr. Melzer, who also serves as president of the Historical Society of New Mexico, has long been a docent at the Harvey House Museum in his hometown of Belén.

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Poetry
Caught Heart: Poems
By Noreen Norris
Sunstone Press
140 pages, paperback, $16.95

In Caught Heart, poet Noreen Norris captures profound moments from her
life, whether observing the power of loss and rebirth or the fragility of raindrops. Gathered from decades of writing, these entries represent the breadth of Norris’s life, from her childhood in Michigan and her years raising a family in San Francisco, to her career as a corporate marketer in Silicon Valley and a more contemplative life in Santa Fe. She records the immediacy of a moment in haiku of birds, wind, and breaking ice, and ruminates on lasting memories about family and relationships. My favorite poem here is “A Visit from God”: “I saw You come at me in a taffeta skirt / and orange sneakers, / cymbals and drums banging, / Your guffaw / bouncing off canyon walls / as You pitched the sun / round the earth.” Norris is a clear-eyed seeker, always striving to create meaning through sensitive observation.

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Photography
To Walk in Beauty: A Navajo Family's Journey Home
Photographs and Text by Stacia Spragg-Braude, Afterword by N. Scott Momaday
Museum of New Mexico Press
198 pages, hardcover, $45

In To Walk in Beauty, photographer Stacia Spragg-Braude documents a Native American family’s quest to preserve their heritage. Through a chance encounter with Dr. Lyle McNeal, the head of the Navajo Sheep Project—which helped restore the tradition of raising churro sheep among the Navajo after the breed had nearly been wiped out—the Begay family sets out on a path to restore their traditional livelihood and to heal as they reclaim their cultural identities. The Begay family, who reside on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, symbolizes so many Native families as they regain their foothold after centuries of cultural abuses. In one of the passages told by family members that accompany these images, Alta Begay observes, “[The churro sheep was] going to extinction, it survived a lot of things, and now it’s healing by being reintroduced to the Navajo Nation. I think the Begay family, like the sheep, also had that kind of history.”

Although the sheep that lend their fleece to the Navajo’s distinctive weavings figure prominently in this story, the collection doesn’t focus exclusively on images of ranching and herding. Spragg-Braude captures a full and complex picture of the family members’ lives, from shearing and weaving to participating in cleansing ceremonies and praying for an uncle’s recovery from cancer. The intimacy of these moments reveals that Spragg-Braude became a part of the family during the 10 years she photographed them. Through these images she doesn’t just move among the Begays, she moves with them—riding the ebb and flow of their joy, loss, and renewal. The technical qualities of these black-and-white images are striking: Spragg-Braude fulfills the photographer’s creed to paint with light. But beyond that, these deeply moving images depict a family’s—and a culture’s—struggle to find beauty behind, around, and before them.

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Fiction
Imperial Yellow
By Douglas Atwill
Sunstone Press
316 pages, paperback, $24.95

In his fourth book, Santa Fe painter Douglas Atwill depicts the growth of fictional painter Donovan Merrill from orphaned youth to manhood. After his family’s tragic death at sea, Merrill’s grandmother, Anna, begins to raise him. Another death in the family leads the two to relocate to the 1930s artist colony of Laguna Beach, California, where Donovan’s interactions with artists and bohemians sparks his interest in painting. Donovan first studies in Europe, then tries to establish himself in Santa Fe as a professional artist. Atwill’s tone is matter-of-fact, and his somewhat journalistic style often only skims the surface of the emotional connections between his characters. Nevertheless, the close relationship between grandson and grandmother is a constant—as Donovan makes his way in the world, Anna supports him financially and emotionally. As in Atwill’s Galisteo Escarpment (2008), whose protagonist is also a painter, the author is at his best when describing an artist’s relationship with the canvas, and how fickle muses guide and shape an artist’s life, both in and out of the studio. Both artists and kindred spirits will enjoy this novel.

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