Product Details
River of Traps: A New Mexico Mountain Life (New York Times Notable Books)

River of Traps: A New Mexico Mountain Life (New York Times Notable Books)
By William deBuys, Alex Harris

Price:

This item is not available for purchase from this store.
Click here to go to Amazon to see other purchasing options.


25 new or used available from $8.41

Average customer review:

Product Description

New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo mountains are a place where two cultures — Hispanic and Anglo — meet. They're also the place where three men meet: William deBuys, a young writer; Alex Harris, a young photographer; and Jacobo Romero, an old farmer. When Harris and deBuys move to New Mexico in the 1970s, Romero is the neighbor who befriends them and becomes their teacher. With the tools of simple labor — shovel and axe, irony and humor — he shows them how to survive, even flourish, in their isolated village. A remarkable look at modern life in the mountains, River of Traps also magically evokes the now-vanished world in which Romero tended flocks on frontier ranges and absorbed the values of a society untouched by cash or Anglo America. His memories and wisdom, shared without sentimentality, permeate this absorbing story of three men and the place that forever shaped their lives.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #320859 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-08-28
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 240 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A beautiful tribute to a man and his work. . . . a memorial of grave and impressive dignity."

Customer Reviews

A powerful blend of imagery and interpersonal relationships.4
River of Traps is not your typical conservation book. This is a drama, provided to the reader in subtle, sweeping prose and powerful photography by the co-authors.

This book is about transitions: young adults, coming of age in world still not comfortable with the overwhelming changes wrought by the turbulent 60s; the politics of water in the southwest; and the transition of a wizened native seer who knows he only has so much time left to impart the wisdom he has gained from his life in the native land he loves.

Never overwritten, but requiring a fair amount of patience, I highly recommend this non-fiction account of three young adults coming into their own, in a new world, only partly of their making.

Four and a half stars.

An honest story of an unusual friendship, words & pictures4
DuBuys' and Harris' friendship with Jacobo Romero was an education for their minds and spirits and they share what they learned in this elegant volume. New Mexicans are hard to write about, because they use language more directly, to a different purpose, than most other Americans. It's difficult to tell a New Mexican's story, because it's hard to use a New Mexican's language. DuBuys has stood in a neutral place to see himself, his friend Alex Harris, their women, and his friend Jacobo Romero, his wife, and others, and to tell a story that is from the heart without being romanticized, that shares what he learned with striking generosity. The pictures are beautiful--the landscape of New Mexican people is even more stirring than the landscape of New Mexican land.

A deserving Pulitzer finalist and a NYTimes Notable Book5
This is a fluid and absorbing book. Each chapter/vignette builds carefully upon the preceding one. The author's knowledge of the Southwest and its intertwined cultures and his affection for the land and his friends makes this a powerful read. Anyone interested in the Southwest, biography and/or photography should read this. It's wonderful!