The Little Ghost Who Wouldn't Go Away/El Pequeno Fantasma Que No Queria Irse is a bilingual (English and Spanish) storybook for young readers, about Rebecca Garcia, a young girl determined to learn why a little ghost continues to quietly haunt the mountain community of El Rito in New Mexico. A warm and engaging story about discovery and emotion, The Little Ghost Who Wouldn't Go Away is nicely illustrated by Kris Hotvedt with a handful of black-and-white drawings.

Having lived in northern new mexico for most of my life, I can relate to this book. My kids love it and ask me to read it to them again and again and again.

What is a book about lost mines without maps? The maps in the book were neat. Maybe the gold is still there?

I wrote the original book in 1963 (as Lost Desert Bonanzas) to mark 25 years of Desert Magazine lost mine stories. The main appeal was Norton Allen's great cartography (this is the only kind of map book that gets better as the maps are outdated by freeways and etc.). I would like input from treasure-seekers, but all I know about the particular lost mines is recounted in the book.

I bought this from my bookclub and hoped it was a steamy novel like the rest of her books. It wasn't, but it was superb in a different way. These three women in the book will win your heart from the start. Don't hesitate, this one's a keeper!

Pat Booth's new book "Marry Me" is not like her previous books. I expected it to contain adult contents. I am only half way through but I can't put it down. If only I had all the time in the world I could finish it in one sitting. It always upsets me when I have to put it down. Definitly a page turner.

This is a compelling story. Judge H. C. McComas and his wife, Juniata, were brutally murdered by a band of Chiricachua Apaches while traveling on the road from Silver City to Lordsburg, New Mexico, on March 28, 1883. Their six-year-old son Charley, traveling with them, was carried away by the Indians and never found, despite long and determined efforts to learn of his whereabouts. For many years, the McComas story remained an obscure footnote to the long history of the Apache Wars in the Southwest. Simmons has rescued it from its obscurity in this fine book.
The detail that Simmons brings to the McComas story is remarkable, considering the difficulties he must have encountered in his research. He has, I think, considered the story from every possible angle, speculating where the facts are not definitely known (many are not), but laying his speculations on a firm foundation of facts. The story is, of course, incredibly sad, and the Chiricahuas do not come off at all well in the telling. But the book is far from an anti-Indian screed. Simmons is sensitive to the Indians' cultural milieu and lifestyle, even if they are not in all respects admirable. The book ends with a description of the 1994 funeral of the celebrated Apache sculptor Allan Houser. Houser's Chricahua father, Sam Haozous, was ten-years-old and an apprentice warrior when he rode with the Indians who attacked the McComas family in 1883. For many years, he and his son carefully guarded the dark secret of his youthful involvement in the atrocity. But Allan Houser related his father's recollections of the incident to Simmons not long before his death. Simmons came to Houser's funeral with an appreciation of the sculptor's artistic accomplishments and a sensitivity to the Chiricahua legacy that he represented.

Highly recommended!

Marc Simmon's Massacre on the Lordsburg Road, A Tragedy of the Apache Wars, Texas A&M University Press, 1997, xviii + 250 pgs. is a splendid book. It takes a great writer to make so much of so little, by which we mean no sarcasm but rather mean so little in the way of records and facts. Apaches attack a little family traveling on the Lordsburg (New Mexico) Road. The adults are slaughtered. The child? There has always been a lot of "surmisin' " about little Charley McComas, and there still must be, but Simmons has taken what facts there are, what contemporaneous stories there are, and a good deal of heretofore unpublished background material on the McComas family and their associates, and put together not only an excellent history, but also a book that at times holds the reader with the same fascination as a good "mystery" might. That's probably not odd. Charley's story is a mystery. This book not only tells the McComas story, as completely as it ever will be told barring new documentary discovery (and if Simmons missed something it really must be hidden), but gives the reader a "feel" for how it was to live in those times (circa 1883), particularly in western New Mexico and Arizona, but by extension in other places in the southwest including northern Mexico.

I picked up this book for two reasons: (1) I'd recently seen the Matachines performed, first by a Hispanic troupe from El Rancho, NM, and then at Jemez Pueblo, which presents both Spanish and Indian versions; (2) my Ph.D. dissertation was on medieval drama and the relationship between its themes and major societal concerns. This study answered many questions I had about the origins and history of the dance; in addition, her exposition of the meanings it has to the different groups who perform it was well-researched and fascinating. Starting with the same basic material, and incorporating many of the same elements (costumes, dance steps, tunes, etc.), Hispanic and Native American people living within a few miles of each other have used the dance to express very different concerns: pride in the Spanish conquest on the one hand, and ambivalence about it on the other. Rodriguez is evenhanded and objective, and presents the various dancers' points of view without gratuitious comment; her descriptions of the styles of different performing groups are vivid and clear. This is a thoroughly scholarly book, but readable too, and the photographs are well chosen.

Rodriguez looks at the Matachines dance as it is performed in two areas along the U.S./Mexico border. She discusses at great length the different structures, presentations, and meanings of this ritual procession dance to the people of these two areas, as well as examinig the Matachines' cultural background. Other books on Matachines contain similar information, but most stop short of the depth and precision of Rodriguez's work. Matachines is an old and extremely complex art form, and Rodriquez successfully tackles the task of discussing days' worth of variations in costume, execution, characterization, and finally the attitudes and beliefs of individuals in both communities towards their cultural dance. The many photographs work well to demonstrate and enhance Rodriguez's findings.

Far too many accounts of life in New Mexico are written by people with an agenda, often Anglos who came here to "find themselves" or "get back to the land" and were outraged when they discovered that reality wouldn't cooperate with their fantasies. By contrast, Stanley Crawford arrived with an open mind and integrated his family so successfully into a small, predominantly Hispanic village that he became the "mayordomo" in charge of administering the community's irrigation system. This book recounts his experiences and describes the workings of the community, in which the water system performs an important symbolic function as well as a practical one. It's well written, sometimes almost poetic, and often very funny. I think this and Crawford's "A Garlic Testament" are far and away the best books on life in rural New Mexico, and I recommend both of them unreservedly.

In "Mayodomo" Stanley Crawford describes his experience as manager of an "acequia" or irrigation ditch system in arid northern New Mexico. The use of acequia-irrigation originated in Spain and was introduced to the desert Southwest by Franciscan monks over 300 years ago. Acequias feed from rivers or larger acequias, and from these larger tributaries water is run through farm land and orchards then back to the main source. Each year a manager (mayordomo) and three commissioners (comisiados) are democratically elected to oversee water rates and insure fair distribution of water to each "parciante" or landowner who farms along the ditch. Acequia association members are historically of Hispanic or Latino descent, so Crawford's anglo heritage creates an interesting viewpoint of an age old tradition. As mayordomo Crawford supervises the annual spring clearing of his association's acequia, determines the amount of water that each parciante will receive, and is partially responcible for record keeping and payrolls. A parciante's share of water is determined by the nature of his plantings and for a larger part, the weather. As manager of his ditch Crawford must also contend with family feuding, annual dues or "delincuencias" and parciantes who "cheat" by diverting water to their lands. Crawford's observations take more into account than the physical labor and political hierarchy associated with the maintenance of an acequia. His words create a meaningful perspective of life among the residents of an old northern New Mexican farming community and his story reveals a group of people that have been chronicled by few writers and generally ignored or forgotten by everyone else. It is a book with literary, anthropological, political, and historical significance. Spanish water laws, established long before state government regulations, support solidarity and insure the parciante's place in the community. Recent land and water legal disputes threaten to undermine an important aspect of life in northern New Mexico, one that keeps these communities together and has done so for hundreds of years.

This is an intriguing analytical summary of the major political, economic, and social trends in Mexico. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the author's scenarios or conclusions, there is a lot to learn here and ponder over. If decisionmakers can read only one book on Mexico, MEXICO 2005 would be an excellent choice.

Once in every decade, an author produces a book that provokes debate and sheds light on a topic analyzed from an entirely fresh perspective. Mike Mazarr's Mexico 2005 is just such a book. This work approaches Mexico through a challenging and articulate framework of six global trends, ranging from the changing allocation of human resources to that of human psychology. The author concludes with a series of probable, controversial scenarios in 2005. The book is rich in insights and piques the reader's interest at every turn of the page. Mazarr's lucid writing and wide-ranging, eclectic themes will appeal to students, academics, the business community, government officials, and the media. Anyone interested in Mexico today and Mexico in the 21st century should read this book.

D.H. Lawrence writes like a painter would write were he to. What is most real in the writings of Lawrence is the physical world, and of course the body. Mornings in Mexico is really a slight work but with a charm to it. There is a relating of facts (especially about Indian life and thought) that you would expect from a travel piece but the charm is in the kind of easy sauntering pace that the narrative keeps. That feeling that it is vacation time and there really is no hurry. The house he lives in for his stay in Mexico and the surrounding markets and open fields in which he walks and the balcony he stands on in the morning with parrot are all pleasantly described. It feels like a place you want to be. The way time away should feel. There is a slight mournful air to the fact that the Americans are beginning to spoil the place, it is as if the Americans have brought that intruder time itself into this timeless land. It's not so much the details you will remember as the overall feel of the work. And Lawrence himself. And here he seems at ease, searching as always but not desperately so, which is a nice Lawrence to spend time with.

Lawrence was a good traveller in these parts and he spent a lot of time carefully observing the Indians he met along the way. He was particularly interested in the ways of thought of the Indians and their religious beliefs and the ways their ideas differed from yours and mine. On simple concepts like time and distance, for example: "To an Indian, time is a vague, foggy reality. There are only three times: en la manana (morning); en la tarde (afternoon); en la noche (night). But to the white monkey (you and me) there are exact spots of time, such as five o'clock and half past three." The Indian's concept of God was different from ours. "With the Indians...there is strictly no god. The Indian does not consider himself as created and therefore external to God, or the creature of God. There is, in our sense of the word, no God. But all is godly. There is no great mind directing the universe. Yet the mystery of creation, the wonder and fascination of creation shimmers in every leaf and stone... There is no God looking on. The only God there is is involved all the time in the dramatic wonder and inconsistency of creation. God is immersed, as it were, in creation, not to be separated or distinguished. There can be no ideal God." Lawrence does a wonderful job of digging into this exotic culture and explaining to us the significance of Indian rituals and dances. I particularly liked one of his statements: "The Indian is completely immersed in the wonder of his own drama." There is also a lovely example of descriptive travel writing in "Market Day", a chapter that makes you slow down your reading pace to savor the beautiful descriptions of small things like a bird's flight or flowers in a doorway. I guess this is the difference between reading and information-processing, which we do so much of today.

I found this book very informative. It demonstrates how much archaeology and our knowledge of the Maya has changed since the Mayan ruins were first 'discovered' in the 19th century.

The cultural biases of the early archaeoligts now explain many of the 'facts' put forward in early books on this subject. Acutally many of these 'facts' were just guesses, but because they were put forward by prominent people they were taken on face value. Much of the work, especially since the 1960's has disproved or changed out of recognition these early 'facts'.

The last overview book on the Maya I read had them as peace loving people in lovely cities in the jungle, who just "gave it all up for no decent reason". This book completly changed my view on that. It made me realise on how slim a foundation many of the earlier works lay.

I'd reccomend this book to anybody who wants to know how much archaeology has changed - and why what these people have discovered is not only in the past, but also has a bearing on us today..

There are many books written on the subject of the Maya civilization. What sets

Jeremy Sabloff's book apart from the rest is how he approaches the subject. He refers

to his book as a story, and provides his reader with a very concise overview of the Maya

civilization. The clarity of his text enhances the usefulness of the book, which in turn

broadens the audience from anthropology students to anyone interested in learning

about the Maya. Sabloff sets out his 'story' to combine history, theory, methods and

fieldwork and best describes the text in his own preface, an "attempt to explain how

early archaeologists arrived at the 'traditional model' of ancient Maya civilization that

was popular in the first half of the century and how fieldwork has given birth to new

discoveries of the Maya." (Sabloff, preface). The text is broken down into six chapters

and in each chapter he uses subheadings to organize his interpretation of the

information and to reveal an accurate knowledge of Maya studies.

Using Maya archaeology as an extended study, Sabloff uses relevant sites

during specific time periods as case studies to examine the area he wishes to describe

to his reader.

The first chapter is entitled 'Growth of Modern Scientific Archaeology',almost

beginning were the preface left on in terms of what Sabloff views as the 'traditional

model' of early Maya archaeology. This begins with the idea of what stream of

questions the archaeologist should ask. In the 'traditional model', Sabloff shows that

the 'what' and 'where' questions of the past are no longer as relevant as the newly

replaced 'why' and 'how' shift. It is in this chapter that Sabloff introduces the first of

many different scholars to emphasize each section. Schiffer and Binford are discussed

as well as one of their more popular methodological issues of the past, linked cultural

activities.

The next two chapters give the reader a contrast with the 'traditional model' of

ancient civilization and new views of the classic period. With these topics, Sabloff

refers to the findings of Morley and Thompson in chapter two and Willey and

Proskouriakoff in the following section. The way he introduces these scholars is one of

respect. Sabloff does not bash the early ideas of archaeologists (knowing now that the

information is not thorough), he describes their work prior to the archaeological

revolution as successful and that many of their ideas were not wrong, just not

developed enough. With regards to the later of the four scholars, Sabloff explains

Proskouriakoff's remarkable findings from the Usumacinta River sites of Piedras and

Yaxchilan and the breakthrough idea that Maya texts record history. What Sabloff

seems to stress is that with each decade, the scholars and the information they have

gathered help the next generation of archaeologists in their quest to better understand

Maya civilization.

Chapter four evaluates new views of the Pre-classic and Post-classic period.

Sabloff introduces specific case studies such as the areas of Chichen Itza and

Cozumel. By focusing in on these areas, Sabloff is able to convey to his reader an

understanding of what archaeology can accomplish.

The remaining two chapters analyze the emergence of a new model and takes a

look at archaeology under this new modern world. Sabloff highlights the scholars

Webster and Gonlin and their research on the emergence of more distant rural

areas among the Maya subareas.

With each chapter, Sabloff gives the reader a new finding in terms of Maya

civilization. He frequently looks for parallels between ourselves and the Maya which

make this civilization even more real and exciting to the reader. The 'story' concludes

with Sabloff asking questions to the reader, and having read the book, the questions

encompass so much information in only a few lines. Sabloff leaves the reader thinking

as well as feeling confident enough to ponder the questions himself.

After the final word has been read, there are ten pages of further readings listed

by chapter, which include everyone mentioned in the book and then some.

'The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya' is lavishly illustrated with

photographs, site plans and maps all of which are in colour. All of these visual aids in

conjunction with the accurate read, help to summerize this complicated subject with

success. Sabloff hits his target perfectly with how he feels this story should be told,

his story is "to understand the development of a past culture, not find lost arks".

If I could have given this book a thousand stars, I would have. I would like to see more like this from Tracie.

After book one, the author fast forwards a few decades and introduces the adult children of the first book. It is done very well, with enough of the familiar to make the reader comfortable, enough new to keep interest and more than enough intrigue for me!

There are, again, four short books in one. The first, The Heart's Calling, is Pamela's story. She is a rebellious young woman who loves the shady Brady. Her parents attempt to stop this destined to fail romance and send her away to live with her grandmother. While there, sulking and hoping to run away, she is suddenly abducted, but not by the man she hopes has come for her. Threading the story back to book one, the reader immediately knows why the kidnapping happened and who it was intended to save. However, I am not sure who was the more surprised, the kidnapper or the victim!

Forever Yours follows, with 23 yr. old independent, stubborn Daughtry Lucas trying to escape the smothering she perceives she is getting from her father, Garrett. As a remedy, she secretly answers a mail order bride ad. She decides to suddenly run away to accomplish her "freedom" all the while having no idea that even as she is using Nicholas Dawson, he is using her as well! He is her ticket to freedom from her home and father, and he, himself has a less than open and fair agenda.

In number three, Angeline is chasing the cause of womens' right
to vote. She meets and follows a strong but deceptive Willa and an even more dastardly Douglas on the circuit for suffrage. She is very young, headstrong and stubborn but finds herself in grave danger and finally realizes the value of an old childhood friendship. But does she realize this just a bit too late?

The last story takes place a little later still - Come Away My Love. Joelle Dawson plans to marry the handsome pilot son of the local town doctor, Daniel Monroe. Howver, while they are engaged, John's horrible accident threatens their relationshop and redirects their lives. When John finds himself paralyzed, Joelle has some serious decisions to make. John tries to make her hate him for the less than whole man he has become. She, on the other hand makes his recovery her purpose in life. In the small Texas town of his rehab, a horrible, violent accident takes its toll on Joelle. This time, it's not only physical, it is mentally, emotionally and sexually destructive. How do these two young Christians in love survive the incredible odds of ever finding happiness? This last story was my favorite of them all. You will be surprised with the ending of this wonderful Tracie Peterson duo set in the young New Mexico wilderness.