The Ghostway Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the sixth of Hillerman's "Navajo Detective" series and the third in which Jim Chee is the main character. In "Ghostway" Hillerman explores the conflict of a Navajo drawn to the White world. Jim Chee is in love with a White school teacher, Mary Landon, and he contemplates marrying her and leaving the reservation to take a job as an FBI agent. But he is also pulled in the opposite direction to become a "singer" and preserve the Navajo ceremonies that are being forgotten as the old timers die off. Chee's preoccupation with the personal choices he must make are always near the surface of this mystery novel.
Hillerman, as always, celebrates the magnificience of the Navajo land and the Navajo's sensitivity to their natural surroundings. And, as always, the knowledge of their land and people give Hillerman's detectives the insight they need to solve the mystery.
"Ghostway" begins with a shootout in the parking lot of a laundromat in Shiprock, New Mexico that leaves two men dead. The story is not one of Hillerman's best or most credible but the character of Margaret Sosi, an entrancing, 15-year old girl wearing a black pea coat makes up for plot deficiencies. We want this girl to live -- but Hillerman readers know he has cruelly killed off children in other novels in the series.
Hillerman novels contain no sex whatsoever, but "Ghostway" comes closer than about any other to intimating that Jim Chee and Mary Landon might have engaged in something more than romantic conversation.

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The Thomas Ladies Club Review

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(More customer reviews)Mr. Hoppe's biggest weakness in this novel is describing efficiently in print what a good film director could put on the screen with great effectiveness. An example is an instance of eco-terrorism in a small Eastern New Mexico town involving a nut case, a fertilizer bomb, a feedlot, our hero Mr. Lauderback, and assorted local residents. There is some fear, some farce, and some fine visuals involved, but it takes the author a full 50 pages to get the afternoon's events concluded. As a reading experience, it is hard to follow and it drags. In a film, it could be hilarious. Much later in the book there is a political event that goes very wrong, followed by a prairie fire that threatens the community. While both incidents require fewer than 50 pages each to conclude, seeing these events on a big screen could be wonderful, while reading about them is just not as dynamic. Do my criticisms mean that this is not a good novel? Whoa, don't jump to that conclusion. "The Thomas Ladies Club" is one of those books that begins without much promise, and day-by-day gets better and better. The main character, known only as Lauderback, is a person with whom I can fully identify. He is a grown-up but not a success. He moves from town-to-town, usually smaller and smaller, getting hired as the sole reporter on newspapers that are published less and less frequently and are on the edge of extinction, like the communities they serve. I've been there and done that, and Mr. Hoppe's depictions of the reporter, the publisher/editor, the advertising woman, the local retailers, the small-time radio guy, etc. are spot-on. I've known those people well. The reporter's start is quite unsatisfying, his life empty, but something magical happens after the big feedlot bomb plot fizzles. He is adopted by the ghosts of several ladies who were important cogs in the civic life of the town 60-80 years ago. He can't explain why or how or even tell anyone about it, but his connection to this grander past leads the local paper to new life, to internet fame, and Lauderback maybe even to love. Speaking of the latter, there is a sexual interlude in this novel which is done perfectly, considering the parties involved. Not very graphic, but quite convincing, and an essential moment which happens at the exactly right time. If you, prospective reader, never worked for money-losing weekly papers, or never lived in a stagnant rural town, or never moved from place to place, mostly alone, mostly reluctantly, mostly underpaid and overworked, perhaps you won't have much sympathy for Mr. Lauderback's trials and triumphs. I saw myself in a great many of the scenes. If this world is foreign to your experience, you may want to learn about it. "Journalism" is not really the point...there are lonely nomads such as Lauderback who manage small department stores, or cable TV companies, or who take x-rays in 11-bed hospitals, or who are patrolman number three on a force just that size. This novel gives people like that, like I was once, some hope that the jobs are actually important, the people we meet were really meant to meet us, and the last town was vital to what we'll learn and grow from in the next one. There are several typos in my copy of this novel, and it sure isn't perfect, but damn, it's good enough so that I am happy I spent some hours with it. The ending, especially, although not absolutely joy-filled, rings true and is beautifully composed. This is Bruce Hoppe's second book. It earns him a right to give us a third, even better one.


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Picture Lauderback, a 21st century itinerant reporter, laboring in self-inflicted obscurity for dying country weeklies across the Heartland. He is down...but not out. (The only reason he's not out being it would never occur to him that he's down.)Picture the Thomas Ladies Club, a relic of a building, all that is left of the dust bowl blighted town of Thomas. And its long gone club members, the keepers of high spirits and side-splitting one liners with which they raged against the darkness of their times. There was Fern Sisk, who once met Emma Goldman, the affable Nell "Sissy" Childers, and, former Harvey girl and wing walker extraordinaire, Emmaline Blankenship. Picture Lauderback hearing their voices. And that they can talk, Lauderback and the women. For the Thomas Ladies, those sirens of the steppe, have plans for Lauderback.And those plans have little to do with Lauderback's quixotic quest to revive the Heartland via the much disputed power of his pen, nor with his all time historical hero, the agrarian populist, "Sockless" Jerry Simpson. Picture only these things (The love story? Don't even think about picturing that.) and you will have nibbled at a story as enduring as legend yet as current as the latest Wall Street Ponzi scheme. While this book is about surviving one's own existence, neither a feedlot ecoterrorist nor the fusion band, Rasta Cowboy, neither the southwest monsoon frog wizard nor the antics at the annual Buckaroo Cotillion can deter Lauderback from keeping such weighty pursuits, if only in his view, firmly on the festive side.

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Polar Bears in the Kitchen Review

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(More customer reviews)POLAR BEARS IN THE KITCHEN maintains the consistently high standard of Joan Leslie Woodruff's previous books. In her spare, lucid and perceptive style, this time she unravels the twisted mind of a serial killer with the whimsical help of her neighborhood ghosts.
Ms. Woodruff writes with the confidence of someone familiar with the extremes of human experience,, investing her heroine, Myra Whitehawk, with a cool, yet empathetic intelligence.
Perhaps we all live unaware we are surrounded by the ghosts of the past. Possibly we cut ourselves off from this reality through fear or convention. Myra Whitehawk introduces us to a far deeper and time-honored tradition in her respectful awareness of her ghostly neighbors, whom she accepts wholeheartedly as a natural part of life.
POLAR BEARS IN THE KITCHEN is an intensely satisfying read on many levels: as a page-turning thriller; as a beautifully etched portrait of a woman in her full power; as a touching example of living Native American spirituality; as a tender appreciation of the natural world; and not least as an insight into the workings of local police and media.
Ms. Woodruff has written another remarkable and enjoyable book . I thoroughly recommend it for anyone looking for a first-class read and a deeper appreciation of the mystery of Life.

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Filled with grief after her cousin Dana's death, Myra isn't in a mood to be messed with. So when a burning car found on her property reveals the body of a dead woman, and it becomes apparent a serial killer may be to blame, Myra and ancient spirits from the nearby Anasazi ruins unite to find the killer.

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Life on the Rocks: One Woman's Adventures in Petroglyph Preservation Review

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(More customer reviews)In 1995, author Katherine Wells and her partner Lloyd Dennis, transplanted Californians, bought 188 acres on the Mesa Prieta in northern New Mexico. The chief attraction of the property was that it contained about 6,000 petroglyphs or carved images on the countless stone faces and boulders on the property. Wells dedicated herself to the petroglyphs - getting them catalogued, sharing knowledge of them, inviting nearby Pueblo Indians to visit them, and fighting to protect them from nearby gravel mining, quarrying, and trucking. LIFE ON THE ROCKS is Wells' story of her life on Mesa Prieta from 1992 to about 2001.
I am rather ambivalent about the book. Those parts that deal with the petroglyphs themselves are the best. Mesa Prieta is unusual in that it has so many petroglyphs from distinctly different time periods - Archaic (from before the Christian era), Pueblo IV (1300-1600 A.D.), and Historic (after the arrival of the Spanish). But what is special is that many of the petroglyphs (of which about two dozen are reproduced in the book via drawings by Wells) are among the most aesthetically pleasing that I have seen; they are more fluid and artistic than is usual, at least as drawn by Wells. Also of value to me were the parts of the book dealing with the efforts of Wells and local activists to fight the depradations of mining and quarrying and the bureaucratic ineptitude and inertia of various governmental agencies, both state and federal.
Less interesting to me were the accounts of Wells and Dennis struggling to make a home and build a series of straw-bale structures atop Mesa Prieta. And even less interesting were those parts of the book that told of very personal trials and tribulations, although I acknowledge that it would have been difficult to keep at least several of those matters out of the book. A more idiosyncratic reservation of mine is that Wells is of a more spiritual bent than I, with New Age and Jungian propensities that I don't share.
Nonetheless, I am glad I read LIFE ON THE ROCKS, and if you also are interested in Native "rock art" (Wells acknowledges the somewhat uneasy status of the term), I suspect you too will find it worth reading. The book definitely is not academic in nature (probably a plus) and the writing is better than average. 3-1/2 stars.

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Katherine Wells's obsession with petroglyphs (images pecked on stone) began in the 1960s. Three decades later, after careers as a teacher, a businessperson, and an artist in Southern California, Wells and Lloyd Dennis, her partner, purchased almost two hundred acres near EspaÃola in northern New Mexico. The large boulders on the property contained many examples of rock art from previous Native inhabitants and the lure was overwhelming.
Wells describes the beginning of her new life and her exploration of the petroglyphs on her new land. Meeting New Mexico archaeologists and local rock art aficionados, and locating previously published information about petroglyphs and the prehistoric inhabitants of the EspaÃola area, Wells learned to identify the time periods when the glyphs were made and to understand many of the motifs found among the more than six thousand petroglyphs on the site.
In addition to discovering all she could about her surroundings, Wells worked with Dennis to design and construct three buildings on their property, each constructed of straw bales. Each of their experiences introduced these transplanted New Mexicans to the oft-cited definition of maÃana: 'not today.' However, the beauty of their adopted homeland made the trials and struggles they encountered pale in comparison.

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In the Sun's House: My Year Teaching on the Navajo Reservation Review

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(More customer reviews)Kurt Caswell takes a job teaching language arts to middle school students on a Navajo reservation at the Borrego Pass School. The New Mexico high country is filled with natural beauty but the lives of poor people in tiny villages seem ugly to Caswell. His students have few options; nothing encourages them to aspire to a life beyond the reservation. Borrego kids insult other Navajos as bilagáanas (whites) if their English is better than their Navajo and particularly if they have spent time in cities.
"This was a violent world, one that stole energy and hope from its people, beat them down, and then kept them down, possibly forever. There must have been something else here too, something soft and caring, something safe and loving, something good that held this community together. If so, I could not, as yet, see it.... But why, I had to ask, did I so readily witness the cruel and violent face of Borrego, and nothing of the other side? Why would a community like this one show me, a stranger, this dark part of itself, and hide its best qualities?"
Caswell makes small inroads into the better qualities -- Renee, a bright, hard working student takes pleasure in his praise for an essay and adopts some of his suggestions for improvements. Earlier she had told him "I hate you." The words hurt so much that Caswell "knew then that I didn't want to teach at all."
Caswell's books is filled with similar hard hitting reflections on his life with his students, with his friend Mary, and with another teacher. He brings a clear, compelling prose to these reflections, and a deep honesty, very impressive in an author only 26 years old. He describes roads so bad that he is almost washed over the edge, a student taking aim at him with a shotgun, and throwing out his lesson plans in despair at teaching "Romeo and Juliet" to his charges.
Some of the best passages describe his enjoyment of the wonderful scenery:
"Such soft asylum is the sun, and that day in late October, that cool, happy day in fall, I needed sanctuary like I needed nothing else, sanctuary from my classroom, from my trailer home, from Borrego Pass School. I had just seen Caleb Benally ride away in a police car after he threatened somebody with a knife at lunch. He likely always carried that knife in his pocket, but somehow on that day, he'd decided the situation demanded he use it. He was a scary kid, and he didn't like me at all. I wondered how long it would be before he decided to use that knife against me."
Caswell is a traveller at heart; he leaves his job after the first year and moves on to other adventures, well described on his travel log (link in first Comment). His list of favorite travel books is inspiring:
(in order of adoration)
The Snow Leopard | Peter Matthiessen
Arctic Dreams | Barry Lopez
Arabian Sands | Wilfred Thesiger
The Long Walk| Slavomir Rawicz
The Songlines | Bruce Chatwin
West with the Night | Beryl Markham
The Lost World of the Kalahari |
Laurens van der Post
Desert Solitaire | Edward Abbey
The Narrow Road to the Deep North |
Basho
In Trouble Again | Redmond O'Hanlon
If Caswell continues to write so well about his travels, he will join that exalted company on my own list.
Robert C. Ross 2010

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In the year he spent teaching at Borrego Pass, a remote Navajo community in northwest New Mexico, Kurt Caswell found himself shunned as persona non grata. His cultural missteps, status as an interloper, and white skin earned him no respect in the classroom or the community-those on the reservation assumed he would come and go like so many teachers had before. But as Caswell attempts to bridge the gap between himself and those who surround him, he finds his calling as a teacher and develops a love for the rich landscape of New Mexico, and manages a hard-won truce between his failings and successes.

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Cries in the Desert (St. Martin's True Crime Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)Well done. Moves at a good clip. Includes many details/info that were left out in the other book. Written by a professional journalist who knows what he's doing and it shows. Am glad this writer left out tiresome banter between DA Yontz and teen reporter Frances Baird, etc., am also relieved we don't have to read about all the "evidence" that the first judge threw out and prosecutor moaned about (when he should have simply been better prepared).
What also makes this a better version is that this writer stays with the victims and perpetrators--as he should, because that's the only story that matters, BECAUSE THAT IS THE STORY. Also, told in chronological order, and that matters a lot here.
Am I saying this is the definitive on this sadist David Parker Ray? Of course not, that's why I gave it four instead of five stars. Someone out there, maybe like Mailer, a writer with time and a good budget ought to dig up the WHOLE DAMN STORY, ALL OF IT, ETC. Until then CRIES IN THE DESERT will have to do & comes fairly close. A good true crime tale. Too bad Ray and his sadistic cohorts weren't put through all that they put their victims through. This is a nightmare tale about a truly sick white trash bunch.

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In the fall of 1999, a twenty-two-year-old woman was discovered naked and bleeding on the streets of a small New Mexico town south of Albuquerque. She was chained to a padlocked metal collar. The tale she told authorties--of being beaten, raped, and tortured with electric shock--was unthinkable. Until she led them to 59-year-old David Ray Parker, his 39-year-old financee Cindy Hendy--and the lakeside trailer they called their "toy box". What the FBI uncovered was unprecedented in the annals of serial crime: restraining devices, elaborate implements of torture, books on human anatomy, medical equipment, scalpels, and a gynecologist's examination table. But these horrors were only part of the shocking story that would unfold in a stunning trial...

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