Tag: Two Valleys Saga

BOOK REVIEW: The Bisti Badlands

BOOK REVIEW: The Bisti Badlands

I recently had the privilege of reading an early copy of the latest offering in Mary Armstrong’s Two Valleys Saga. The fourth volume in this insightful look at southern New Mexico in the late 1800s, The Bisti Badlands follows the series’ main character, Jesús Messi as he comes to terms with his heritage, the politics of his day, and the people around him. Along his journey, we get to meet some of the people who make New Mexico’s history so vastly entertaining: Colonel Albert J. Fountain and Oliver Lee and their families, Albert Bacon Fall, Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Salpointe, and feminist Ada McPherson Morley, to name a few.

Jesús is all over New Mexico in this book, from Las Cruces to the Bistis to Santa Fe, and his emotions are all over the place, too. Armstrong does a terrific job of incorporating a young man’s search for purpose into his experience of historical events, seamlessly weaving the factual and fictional into a coherent whole. I can’t tell you more without spoiling the plot, so I’m simply going to say that, if you are interested in the history of New Mexico and the American West, or simply love a good coming-of-age story, I highly recommend The Bisti Badlands.

Book Review: The Mesilla

Book Review: The Mesilla

If you recognize the name Albert Fountain, you’ll almost certainly associate him with his disappearance in the New Mexico desert in 1896 along with his eight-year-old son. And that’s probably almost everything you know about the man.

But Fountain’s disappearance happened as the result of events that took place well before that early February day. In fact, he’d been a polarizing figure in southern New Mexico for a number of years. He’d defended Billy the Kid in court and made other decisions that brought attention to himself—and not necessarily in a good way.

Mary Armstrong’s novel The Mesilla provides a fictional account of some of the events in Fountain’s career prior to his disappearance. This story, the first in Armstrong’s Two Valleys Saga series, centers around Fountain’s defense of Bronco Sue, a woman who was accused of killing her husband, one of a series of men she’d cohabitated with. The courtroom scenes alone are worth the price of this book.

Armstrong has clearly done her homework. The novel is packed with information and anecdotes about New Mexico’s Mesilla and Tularosa Valleys in the late 1800s, which she feeds seamlessly into the story line. If you’re interested in the history of these areas or are just looking for a well-written historical novel, I recommend The Mesilla.