Month: November 2024

Mae Martin Mysteries Sequence and Settings: A Quick Guide to the Series

When reading a long series, it’s helpful to have a list of the titles in order, and reminders of the years and places in which they’re set.

1. The Calling Winter 2009 – Spring 2010 Bertie County, NC and Norfolk and Virginia Beach, VA
2. Shaman’s Blues August 2010 Truth or Consequences and Santa Fe, NM
3. Snake Face December 2010 Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences, NM and a road trip
4. Soul Loss Spring 2011 Elephant Butte, Hatch, Truth or Consequences, and Santa Fe, NM
5. Ghost Sickness Summer 2011 Truth or Consequences and Mescalero, NM
6. Death Omen August – October 2011 Truth or Consequences and Santa Fe, NM and a road trip
7. Shadow Family December 2011 – January 2012 Truth or Consequences and Santa Fe, NM, Bertie County, NC, and a road trip
7.5 Gifts and Thefts Summer 2012 – Spring 2013 Santa Fe, Las Cruces, Truth or Consequences, Mescalero, and Elephant Butte, NM
8. Chloride Canyon June 2013 Las Cruces, Truth or Consequences, and Chloride, NM
9. Smoking Mirror August 2013 Truth or Consequences and Santa Fe, NM and coastal Maine

The Miracle of Reading

When I was recently visiting my friend Bob at the New Mexico Veterans’ Home, we found ourselves talking about reading. Not only about the book I’d brought him and why I thought he’d like it, but about reading itself, how amazing it was when we first learned to read as children. He’s eighty-nine and I’m seventy, but we both remember the experience. We marveled at how the transition took place from puzzling over words to reading so fluidly we instantly visualize the story, unaware of looking at little figures on a page and translating them into meaning something.

He recalled being very young, excited to read, and bothering all the adults and older siblings around him, running around with a book asking “What’s that word? What does that word mean?” And I remembered not being able to read yet, and my sister pretending she could read by turning the pages of one of our favorite books and reciting the story from memory. Because we wanted to read. To pass through the gateway to stories.

And yet so many people don’t read. According to a Washington Post article, 46% of Americans didn’t read even one book last year. What they’re missing! For those of us who do read, it’s a daily miracle. If I couldn’t read, I don’t know what I would do with myself. I rely on books for information, for escape, for experience, for insight. I think of a wonderful poem by Truth or Consequences poet Beverly Manley called Why I Read Fiction, written to explain to a friend who didn’t understand. If you can find or order her book, Seasons of the Soul, I recommend it, not only for that poem, but for all of them. The last two lines:
“I read to open my heart, my eyes, my mind
I read to feel connection with all mankind.”

Book Review: Burro Creek Canyon

Joyce White’s memoir of her life on an Arizona Ranch is sheer delight—her sense of humor, her ability to tell a unique and colorful and anecdote in each chapter, her knack for making the most ordinary aspects of her life and work exciting. Her writing style is not the most polished, but I thoroughly enjoyed every page, starting with her first meeting with her future husband, Bob, a divorced rancher living out in the middle of nowhere. She was also divorced, with a young son. She had never been a cowgirl before, but she was a brave woman. They spent their honeymoon on Bob’s remote ranch, the Loving U, in Burro Creek Canyon. She describes how she first learned to ride, to participate in cattle drives, and to cook out on the trail. This was in the 1950s and 60s. Although the house was a fine, solid house, it didn’t have electricity and was so remote she home schooled her son before homeschooling was a thing.

Every animal has character. Dogs and horses were key members of the ranch team. The social life people managed to have in a place where there weren’t any other people around is impressive. The efforts they had to undertake see friends and family in other parts of the Southwest shows how important human connection is. I can see why she loved the place, and how every day of those eight years was an adventure. In a way, I was sad as she was when they sold the ranch and moved to move to Missouri to start cattle farming in a place with more water and more grass. I highly recommend her story. She also provides recipes that one could cook in a ranch house without electricity or out on the trail feeding the cowboys.