New Mexico Books

War came to the Arizona border in the late 1920s, and Americans could sit on the hills and watch the bombing and shooting in the Mexican half of Ambos Nogales.

Rios was there, a five-year-old in Sonora, one of those who huddled behind a stove when the bombing began. In those days Nogales was small and unimportant, not the massive 'maquiladora' and 'narcotrafficante' city of today. In those days it was neighbourly where "We were related to everybody, and everybody was related to us."

It was a time before technology and computers and cell phones and television; the rich had 'Cafe Combate' coffee. His mother made 'Caracolillo' by carefully roasting pea beans in a pan on the stove, coating them with sugar so they wouldn't burn and would acquire a chicory flavour: "The fire and the beans and the sugar and the grinding -- it all had a loud and happy smell that could not be ignored. It was as if the coffee had hands, which it would put around our faces and try to draw us to its chest. They were strong hands and would not give up. Even after the coffee was made, the hands came up out of it as steam, and they still tried to wave us over."

The "war" was the dying embers of the Revolucion of 1910, embers of which flickered weakly until the 1940s. But this isn't a book about war; instead, it's about a small boy who changed as Mexico slowly evolved from peons to professionals and the world changed from simplicity to complexity and change.

Rios offers a fond remembrance of this lost world of the innocence of a young boy. His writing is artistry in words, his stories have a comfortable elegaqnce because they are so long past. Traces of that life can sometimes still be found in some small and remote villages. Today most towns and cities in Mexico, as in the U.S., have matured into violence and anonymity. Rios writes of a time of innocence a nd trust that is now only a fond distant memory.

Day-to-day lives are different in various lands, but basic memories are often similar. I remember similar quiet idylls of little towns from Orillia in Canada to Ringstedt in Germany to Desemboque in Mexico. Feelings and attitudes are much the same in these quiet safe havens of the past. There is an unspoken brotherhood of small towns which Rios evokes with introspection and deft charm.

This is less of a book about Mexico than the wistful recollections of a small town in a simpler era. Rios offers some sunshine sketches of a Mayberry in Mexico.

Cycle Of Seasons In Corrales by freelance writer Ruth W. Armstrong is an inspirational celebration of the turn of the seasons in Corrales and throughout New Mexico. Love of life, memories of the past and keen awareness of the present permeate this spiritual treatise. Enhanced with the photography of Ruth and Ellis Armstrong, Cycle Of Seasons In Corrales an impressive and timeless evocation and well worth the reading by anyone who appreciates what nature offers as the Earth encircles the Sun.

Rare is the book that can keep you enthralled and page-turning on a topic of which you previously couldn't hold ground past two seconds in conversation.

Or one that you can actually read cover to cover from first picking up.

The style of writing is as breezy as it is intensive and never dry.

An excellent work and book.

Mr. Nichols continues to amaze and delight his readers. As a novelist he lives in an invented world but as an essayast he takes his master's skill at prose and knifes into the butter of living in a world he finds all too real. "Dancing On The Stones" allows the reader to hop safely from the rocks of reality onto the reefs of fantsy. John's reality in Taos becomes the reader's virtual trip to his moral values. The trip is a maze of lofty thoughts bottomed by harsh facts and an unpleasant insistence on making one's living while living with what one makes. If more of us had John Nichols's insight into nature we'd see our world the way he sees his: life exists in spite of nature and life is as fragile as the clouds which enhance and hide it.

I had the privilege and honor to be one of Professor Luis Martín's pupils at SMU a decade and a half ago. I recall his playful, excitable and gregarious personality, as well as his trademark lectures in which he typically juggled history, theology, poetry, sociology and hard-core Sevillian gossip!

Such is the trademark of his writing in "Daughters of the Conquistadores." Don Luis artfully stretches the imagination of the reader by plotting in occurences and tribulations of nuns, divorcees, concubines, "tapadas" and "beatas" in the colonial Peru of 1550-1800. In a most authentic and self-bred style, he narrates the mysteries and abuses taking place in convents and nunneries, haciendas and palaces; and underlines the influence of women in a society relentlessly dominated by "Don Juanism" and sternly regulated and probed by an over-zealous Catholic church.

A book tough to research and tougher to write, "Daughters of the Conquistadores" is fun to read, bare of profound insights and laden with satyrical, albeit tragic, anecdotes.

Joe brings a lot of native stoys with jokes and morals. All use interesting creatures from New Mexico.

What is the difference between tonalpohualli and tomalamatl and Mayan astrology. When I was in Mexico my Tonalamatl was done. I am an obsidian butterfly, jaguar, cassa and hummingbird. When I used Bruce Scofield's book I came up with different symbols. Tonalamatl is based on the Codice Borgio. Is Scofield's the same version? My birthday is Sept. 10, 1948 in Canada. I want to learn the tomalamatl and want to know if that is what Bruce's book will teach me. My e-mail is: heatherhess@hotmail.com PLEASE ADVISE

Dead Water Rites is the fourth book in the Booker Series by Monty Joynes, however readers new to Joynes will understand its powerful message of man's fate if he continues to rape the earth.

A white man known sometimes as Booker and sometimes as Anglo "searches for new identity and spiritual completeness among the Pueblo people." He learns how water is the very lifeblood of the People, and that they regard it as a "living being." A tribal elder sees the water drying up and dying, and trusts Booker with the mission of finding the source of the "sick water."

If the water is truly dying, then the dead water rites will be performed, and life will cease to exist.

As he searches for the sick water, Booker also continues his journey of spiritual growth. He meets a militant female environmentalist, and begins learning of some of the politics involved in water rights. He also learns that perhaps the celibate life isn't right for him after all.

A group of land developers with the philosophy that "any day is a good day to make money" are also looking at the water. They draw up a proposal for a gambling casino, replete with promises of economic security. Buried in the fine print are the clauses handing over all water rights.

A former real estate developer himself, Booker recognizes the true impact of the casino on the People. He explains this to the tribal elders, who say they will "continue to pray and seek a vision." Booker and the young woman are seriously injured in a car accident, from which it takes months to recover. The developers move ahead unhampered with their plans.

Dead Water Rites "is lucid and literary, an articulate and artful plea to cease our self-destructive exploitation of the environment and native people." Those who read it will gain a new respect for the liquid essential to all life on Earth, and a better understanding of those who seek to keep it alive.

Another wonderful story by Ms. Lynn. Easy and enjoyable to read. Great story. Lots of twists and turns. I really enjoy reading her novels.

This book is a fascinating look at a topic that reveals much about what life, and death, were like in Spanish Colonial New Mexico. While most researchers focus on baptismal and marriage records to gain insight into a community's life and survival, Will de Chaparro looks in darker corners at a people in order to shed light on a culture that has thrived and survived for over four centuries.