2022 Southwest Books of the Year

"It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path. Vivid, tender, darkly funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the...

"Three noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head. Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett...

"Driving While Brown is a saga and a warning. Two investigative journalists spent several years chronicling the human consequences of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's relentless immigration enforcement in Maricopa County, Arizona. They tell the tale of two dueling movements--Arizona's restrictionist cause embraced by Joe Arpaio and the Latino resistance that rose up against him. This inside story of the wrenching battles that embittered and divided Arizonans...

"This is the first anthology to bring together Diné writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose into a single collection of Navajo literature. The book includes author biographies and interviews with a selections of the writers' most important creative work, as well as a chronology and resources for teachers and readers"--

On May 30, 1899, history was made when Pearl Hart, disguised as a man, held up a stagecoach in Arizona and robbed the passengers at gunpoint. A manhunt ensued as word of her heist spread, and Pearl Hart went on to become a media sensation and the most notorious female outlaw on the Western frontier. Her early life, family and fate after her later release from prison have long remained a mystery to scholars and historians, until now.

Two immortal brothers crisscross the American Southwest to elude a murderous biker gang and protect a young woman. Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims. They are rovers, nearly indestructible nocturnal beings who must consume human blood in order to survive. For seventy years they have lurked on the fringes of society, roaming from town to town, stalking the transients, addicts, and prostitutes they feed...

"Oak Flat tells the story of a race-against-time struggle for a swath of American land, which pits one of the poorest communities in the United States against the federal government and two of the world's largest mining conglomerates. The book follows the fortunes of two families with profound connections to the contested site: the Nosies, an Apache family whose teenage daughter is an activist and leader in the Oak Flat fight, and the Gorhams, a mining...

"Natural Landmarks of Arizona celebrates the vast geological past of Arizona's natural monuments through the eyes of an author who has called Arizona home for most of his life. In David Yetman's new book, he shows us how Arizona's most iconic landmarks were formed millions of years ago and sheds light on more recent histories of these landmarks as well"--

Cody is worried when his family on a New Mexico Navajo reservation runs out of water, but Darlene Arviso, called "The Water Lady," is on the way with her tanker truck. Includes glossary of Navajo terms and notes about Arviso and life on a reservation.

"In March 1943, twenty-seven children began third grade in a strange new environment: the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. Together with their teacher, Miss Yamauchi, these uprooted young Americans began keeping a classroom diary, with a different child illustrating each day's entry. Their full-color diary entries paint a vivid picture of daily life in an internment camp: schoolwork, sports, pets, holidays, health--and the mixed feelings of citizens...