There’s nothing better than the cooling mid-summer thunderstorms that wash away the desert’s humidity, dust and oppressive heat. We love reading on the porch while the rain pours heavy and hard from the heavens, and figure you do too. Other than dancing in the rain, there’s no reason to be out in it, so we decided to put together some book reviews for your consideration. All of the following titles are available at Antigone Books, except for Ghosts of Central Arizona, which is available at chain booksellers.
Viva los chubascos!
HOOP DANCING:
More Journeys Through Nocturnal Photography, Book Two
by Stu Jenks
Fezziwig Press (2009) Photography/Memoir
Stu Jenks makes magic in the dark. While his breadth of subjects is deep and wide, he is well known for his ethereal nighttime photos. In Hoop Dancing, Jenks takes the reader on his artistic journeys deep into deserts and forests where he spends hours creating gorgeous, otherworldly images.
Along the way, Jenks lays his soul bare while he vividly reflects on life, love, loss and rebirth. His poignant explorations into the natural world include ruminations on humanity’s ancient issues – especially reconciling the physical with the spiritual. An important observation Jenks makes is remembering “that my body is just the vessel that moves my soul through this world…not to be hated or judged, but loved for doing the good job of moving me around.”
With breathtaking photography, Hoop Dancing is an inspired art book that delves into Jenks’ creative process and reminds us of the importance of connecting with nature. In doing so, we connect to a greater power. — Jamie Manser
REVENGE OF THE SAGUARO
Offbeat Travels Through America’s Southwest
by Tom Miller
Cincos Puntos Press (2010) History
Forget about Padre Kino, Wyatt Earp, and the rest of standard western history. Here’s a book that focuses on the real aspects of the Southwestern desert. As a history of the region, it doesn’t get any better than this. Miller has written ten books, every one great. This one is the essential text.
The title refers to an incident where a white trash dumbass went out into the desert hunting Saguaro cactus. He got one, a 3,000 pound one, shot it and guess what happened? It toppled over and killed him.
Interested in the story of the chimichanga? Well, it’s here. Cockfighting? You want to know the history of the classic song “La Bamba”? What about “Rosa’s Cantina” - the one in the Marty Robbins song? Ed Abbey’s eco-militants? A history of the bola tie and black velvet paintings, for cryin’ out loud!
By far the best book on the region – there should be Pulitzer Prizes for this stuff. — Al Perry
GHOSTS OF CENTRAL ARIZONA
by Heather Woodward
Schiffer Publishing Ltd (2010) Paranormal/History
A combo platter of memoir, travel guide, historic tales and hauntings, Ghosts also offers a robust crash course in paranormal investigating. Woodward balances the scientific tools with the intuitive and psychic and reminds us that investigating paranormal activity isn’t what you see on television.
With a small crew of friends, Woodward explores reputed otherworldly activities in Sedona, Jerome, Cottonwood, Flagstaff and the Superstition Mountains. Each location has driving directions and contact information along with the history of the towns and the buildings said to be populated by specters. With the Old West’s background of murder and mayhem, most of the tales stem from tragic circumstances. Save this one for a dark and driving monsoon afternoon to fully capture the creepy factor. — Jamie Manser
PUTREFACTION LIVE 
by Warren Perkins
University of New Mexico Press (2009) Fiction
James, a mixed-blood Navajo in his twenties experiences ranch-life, alcohol/drug trouble and jail time, being a tour-guide at Hubbell Trading Post, and playing guitar in a heavy metal rez band, Putrefaction. With the insight that only a true insider can bring to an enigmatic culture such as the Dineh, Perkins illuminates contemporary challenges and attitudes among the young and not-so-young residents of the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona. — Dolly Spalding
THE LAST READER
by David Toscana, translated by Aza Zatz
Texas Tech University Press (2009) Fiction
In the Northern desert of Mexico sits the village of Icamole, “forty houses in a ragged line, like poorly parked vans.” The rain clouds have long been absent, so most villagers depend on water brought in by the government. But not Remigio, who has the last well in town with water.
One night, Remigio finds something obstructing his access to the well. It is the body of a lovely, young schoolgirl, whom a day later is reported missing from another village. For advice, Remigio goes to his father, Lucio, once the village librarian, but now stripped of both title and pay.
Lucio, the novel’s true protagonist, sees life through the prism of the many novels he has read. Knowing the residents of Icamole have no use for books, Lucio is reading the library’s remaining novels, and discarding those he dislikes. When the police arrive in Icamole to investigate, Remigio realizes that following his father’s advice might have been a mistake.
Toscana is less interested the mystery of the girl’s death than in the irrational things people do and the border between fiction and reality. While the sanity of his protagonist is debatable, Toscana succeeds in creating an absorbing work of dark comedy with unexpected depth. — Jim Nelson
LIFE IN THE HOTHOUSE: How a Living Planet Survives Climate Change
by Melanie Lenart
University of Arizona Press (2010) Non-Fiction
Melting glaciers, the heating effect of greenhouse gases, stronger hurricanes – are these angst-inspiring climatic extremes unprecedented? In Life in the Hothouse, Melanie Lenart puts her formidable writing chops to work to produce a highly readable examination of Earth’s survival mechanisms – including spikes in hurricanes and volcanic activity – through countless episodes of global warming and cooling spanning millennia.
Referencing the holistic ideas of Gaia theory (the view that the world – from its cells to its ecosystems to its neighboring planets – is an organic, living, breathing system) as well as loads of expert study, the author explains the ways Earth moderates its temperature.
Lenart, who earned her Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Global Change from the U of A, takes potentially dry research and transforms it into straight-up journalistic language with a punch. Readers benefit from all the heavy lifting she’s done collecting data and presenting it in an easy-to-digest package. From Lenart’s outline of Gaia theory in Chapter 2 to an observation she makes in her conclusion that, “We are Gaia. We’re the ones who must make repairs, along with the other living systems on the planet,” Hothouse leaves us with the sense that there is something we can do to help.— Lee Gutowski
CROSSING WITH THE VIRGIN: Stories From the Migrant Trail
by Kathryn Ferguson, Norma A. Price, Ted Parks, University of Arizona Press (2010)
Non-Fiction
A remarkable book on many levels, Ferguson, Price and Parks, relate 39 tales of heartbreak and hope wrapped up in what are often desperate attempts by migrants to create a better life.
The authors, who take turns in re-telling the stories, are members of the Samaritans, a humanitarian group (affiliated with former 1980s Sanctuary Movement leader John Fife) whose mission is to save as many lives as possible in the deadly desert by providing food, water and emergency medical care. These short stories alternate from brief but vivid snapshots to fully developed tales of an alternate universe deep within the Sonoran landscape. Populated by polleros, (crossing guides) banditos, drug smugglers, la migra and all manner of Mexican nationals who have invested everything in trying to make it safely across the border, it’s difficult to believe most of the action is so relatively close to our cool and comfortable homes.
Many of these stories take place in summer and it’s difficult not to feel the searing heat of the day or unforgiving harshness of the terrain. And while there are few true happy endings here, Fife’s introduction reminds us that these, and stories like them, may be “all we have to fight off the illness and death created by a tragically failed border enforcement policy.” Crossing with the Virgin is as much a disturbing history text as it is a testament to the human spirit. — Jim Lipson
