A Zia book

As The Surrounded opens, Archilde León has just returned from the big city to his father's ranch on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. The story that unfolds captures the intense and varied conflict that already characterized reservation life in 1936, when this remarkable novel was first published. Educated at a federal Indian boarding school, Archilde is torn not only between white and Indian cultures but also between love for his Spanish father and his Indian mother, who in her old age is rejecting white culture and religion to return to the ways of her people. Archilde's young contemporaries, meanwhile, are succumbing to the destructive influence of reservation life, growing increasingly uprooted, dissolute, and hopeless. Although Archilde plans to leave the reservation after a brief visit, his entanglements delay his departure until he faces destruction by the white man's law. In an early review of The Surrounded, Oliver La Farge praised it as "simple, clear, direct, devoid of affectations, and fast-moving." He included it in his "small list of creditable modern novels using the first Americans as theme." Several decades later, long out of print but not forgotten, The Surrounded is still considered one of the best works of fiction by or about Native Americans.

Noted New Mexican author describes the end of the "rico" era in a small New Mexico town after the Civil War in this historical novel.

During the Great Depression, many young men looking for success found themselves lucky just to survive. The Chokecherry Tree, a realistic novel of the Depression set in southern Minnesota, recounts one man's attempt to escape small-town life and find success in the world outside.

Tells the story of Sam Tucker, a Texas tenant farmer who, though very poor, fights nature, the seasons, and a good many of his fellow men to bring something back from the earth.

Tacey Cromwell moved to Bisbee's Brewery Gulch to find love and heartbreak.

A tiny segment of America, shut in by ignorance, fostered by the selfish interests of the storekeeper who dominates the community and who keeps the people bound to their old Spanish ways, beliefs, superstitions, faith, despite the efforts of a few sceptics who were once ""outside"" -- such is the setting for this unusual story of a Penitente community in New Mexico. Little Jo has achieved legendary fame in the group as the son of a murderer who escaped from jail to see his baby and his wife before she died. The boy is brought up by a spiteful uncle and aunt; he is championed by old Cornelio, loved by direct, fiery Mela, and noted because of his inherited ability to sing the old songs in the traditional way. The bleak life in the community is supplemented by the colorful religious and social events, the unworldly attitude towards the law, governmental regulations, education and health -- factors in producing Little Jo for the Army, which plucks him out of his little world, after he has had his revenge on his hated cousin.....A nice job.-Kirkus Review