Product Description

In 1937, Doc Noss—part-adventurer, part-conman—and his wife Babe discovered fabulous treasure inside the caverns of New Mexico’s Victorio Peak. They dynamited the tunnel to hide the treasure from other treasure hunters. At least that’s what they said happened. Babe’s grandson Terry Delonas grew up listening to his grandmother’s magical stories about her dead husband and Victorio Peak. Her stories were his legacy. In the 1980s, Terry, a gay man, tested positive for HIV. He decided that searching for Victorio’s lost treasure was the only dream that would give his life meaning. With his grandmother’s grit and her gift for talking her way through tough places, he found money and support to follow his dream and overcome many obstacles—bad weather, broken equipment, the army, Congress, and other fortune hunters. But Victorio Peak, that inscrutable and mysterious mountain, would not give up its treasure.

"This book’s truth is…not about gold, but a tale (history, fiction, philosophy, and authorial intervention). That is why the book’s incomplete title (“What men call treasure…the gods call dross”) is so poignant: It is the story, in all its complications, winding paths, claustrophobia, and sometimes frustrating dead ends, that is the true wealth." —San Antonio Current

Robert Boswell, an acclaimed novelist, is the author of seven books, most recently Century’s Son (Picador, 2003). His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and other magazines. He shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston with his wife, novelist Antonya Nelson.

David Schweidel, who grew up in El Paso on the Mexican border, remembers feeling like an anthropologist long before he knew what an anthropologist was. His first novel, Confidence of the Heart, won the 1995 Milkweed National Fiction Prize. He lives in Berkeley with his wife Linda and works at the University of California.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187992 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

About the Author
David Schweidel grew up in El Paso, Texas, three miles from the Mexican border. He remembers feeling like an anthropologist long before he knew what an anthropologist was. His first novel, Confidence of the Heart, won the Milkwood National Fiction Prize in 1995. Currently, he lives in Berkeley with his wife Linda and works at the University of California.

Robert Boswell is normally a fiction writer. He is the author of seven books, most recently Century's Son reprinted by Picador in 2003. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and many other magazines. He shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston with his wife, writer Antonya Nelson.

Customer Reviews

A fascinating true story of lost mysteries, doubly remarkable in today's modern era
What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak is the in-depth true story of one family's legendary brush with riches. In 1937, con man and chiropodist Doc Noss ventured inside a New Mexico mountain named after the Apache chief Victorio. He discovered a cavern of incredible riches - statues of saints, swords, a crown, a chest of jewelry, twenty-seven skeletons, and roughly 16,000 gold bars of varying types. When the Doc and his wife tried to gain better access to the cavern, one of their dynamite blasts destroyed the narrow passage, and the U.S. government claimed the land for missile testing shortly after. A saga of discovery, lost treasure, and phenomenally questionable acts of the U.S. Government, What Men Call Treasure is a fascinating true story of lost mysteries, doubly remarkable in today's modern era when most corners of the earth have been thoroughly explored.

A quirky story with adventure and philosophy
When I was a kid, I used to love watching the show "Unsolved Mysteries." One story they did was about a couple named Doc and Babe Noss, 1930s adventurers who found a cave in the New Mexico mountains in which a large amount of Spanish treasure and gold bars was hidden. Doc blew up the entrance to the cave to keep it hidden; when he died, Babe spent her whole life trying to find it again. Years later, her grandson, Terry Delonas, took up the quest to validate his grandmother's name and spent years searching for the treasure.

The strength of this book is in its unconventional narrative. The authors originally met Terry and decided to do a book on his treasure hunting that was sure to be a blockbuster when the long-lost treasure was uncovered at last. They weave a story that tells about New Mexico, the Indian raiders and Spanish conquistadores who accumulated the treasure, how it may have come to be hidden, and the various prospectors over the years who have tried to find it. They also chronicle Terry's life as a closeted gay man with AIDS, trying to deal with the federal bureaucracy and to get the money to keep searching for his grandmother's treasure.

Finally, they tell of their own dawning realization that the entire tale was an elaborate multi-generational fantasy that sheds light on the human capacity for love, belief, and self-deception. But as the authors document, the true believers are still convinced that someday, Doc Noss's treasure will be discovered and all the skeptics will be proved wrong.

Since there was no blockbuster discovery, "What Men Call Treasure" is probably not a book with broad general appeal. But it will appeal to any reader with a taste for quirky stories about odd characters, and will provoke with dreams of adventure and some mighty interesting philosophical musings.

Reviewer: Liz Clare, co-author of the historical novel "To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark"