Rust

A random article in a travel magazine, about coyotes freely roaming the banks of the Rio Grande right in middle of the city of Albuquerque, compels talented but socially isolated artist Margaret Shaw to pack up and move from New York City to New Mexico. She quickly settles into a Chicano/Mexican barrio near the river, spending long days at local junkyards in a quest to satisfy another recent obsession, her determination to move her art from two dimensions to three. Collecting rusty parts from obsolete machinery, she imagines welding them into sculptures, and she never looks back at the sorrowful past she left behind in the East.

Her new life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Rico Garcia, known locally as "El Rey", the King of the low rider welders, in a neighborhood autobody shop. Impulsively, she asks him to teach her to weld. Unlike Margaret, whose life-style is completely solitary, Rico lives with his wife, three daughters, a granddaughter, and his mother. There is no common ground between the two, but once they begin welding lessons at Rico's shop, a deep instantaneous friendship sparks, igniting intense, chaotic self-reflection and driving them both to confront the damage they have suffered in their individual pasts.

Against this background of emotional unpredictability, Margaret and Rico embark on an odyssey, both grounded and mystical, that carries them through the silent, wide open spaces of the high desert to the edge of healing, and perhaps beyond.

The Reader will never forget this one.

And, A Room Full of Bones, a Ruth Galloway Mystery, Elly Griffiths

When Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop, she finds the museum's curator lying dead on the floor. Soon after, the museum's wealthy owner is also found dead, in his stables.

These two deaths could be from natural causes, but when he is called in to investigate, Nelson isn't convinced, and it is only a matter of time before he and Ruth cross paths once more. When threatening letters come to light, events take on even more sinister turn. But as Ruth's friends become involved, where will her loyalties lie? As her convictions are tested, Ruth and Nelson must discover how Aboriginal skulls, drug smuggling, and the mystery of "The Dreaming" hold the answer to these deaths, as well as the Key to their own survival.

And, The Texas Rangers and The Mexican Revolution, The Bloodiest Decade, 1910 - 1920, Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler

The decade 1910 - 1920 was the bloodiest in the controversial history of one of the most famous law enforcement agencies in the world, The Texas Rangers. Much of the bloodshed was along the thousand mile Texas/Mexico border because these were the years of the Mexican Revolution.

Charles Harris III and Louis Sadler shed new light on this turbulent period by uncovering the clandestine role of Mexican President Venustiano Carranza in the border violence. They document two virtually unknown invasions of Texas by Mexican troops acting under Carranza's orders. Harris and Sadler suggest the notorious "Plan de San Diego", usually portrayed by historians as a plot hatched in south Texas, was actually spawned in Mexico by Carranza. This conspiracy, which called for the execution of all Anglo males sixteen and older, the establishment of a Hispanic Republic, was designed to cause a race war between Hispanics and Anglos. One of Carranza's goals was to end the support being given by border residents to his rival Pancho Villa.

The "Plan de San Diego" caused the governor of Texas to order the Texas Rangers to wipe out the insurgency along the border. This resulted in an estimated 300 Hispanics being killed by the Rangers and others without benefit of judge and jury.

The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution

"This will be the standard book on the Rangers for this period and probably the most thoroughly researched book on the Rangers in any period." Alwyn Barr, Professor of History, Texas Tech University.

From the Texas Bookshelves.

See you at Rylander!