The Book of Archives and Other Stories from the Mora Valley, New Mexico: Volume 18 - Paperback

by A. Gabriel Meléndez (Author), Robert Con Davis-Undiano (Foreword by)

In the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico's Mora Valley harbors the ghosts of history: troubadours and soldiers, Plains Indians and settlers, families fleeing and finding home. There, more than a century ago, villagers collect scraps of paper documenting the valley's history and their identity--military records, travelers' diaries, newspaper articles, poetry, and more--and bind them into a leather portfolio known as "The Book of Archives." When a bomb blast during the Mexican-American War scatters the book's contents to the wind, the memory of the accounts lives on instead in the minds of Mora residents. Poets and storytellers pass down the valley's traditions into the twentieth century, from one generation to the next. In this pathbreaking dual-language volume, author A. Gabriel Meléndez joins their ranks, continuing the retelling of Mora Valley's tales for our time.