In the historical novel "Death Comes for the Archbishop," Willa Cather depicts Padre Antonio Jose Martinez as an unscrupulous, backward, rogue priest, and Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy as a civilizing, heroic, and monumental figure. Countering Cather's portrayal, de Aragon attempts to set the historical record straight.

A professional historian, author, editor, and translator, Marc Simmons has published numerous books and monographs on the Southwest as well as articles in more than twenty scholarly and popular journals.

Life in early New Mexico was often perilous. Geographic isolation attracted outlaws and ruffians, and skirmishes often arose between the indigenous tribes and settlers. In response, the U.S. government set up military forts and outposts to protect its new citizens. These strongholds include Fort Craig, where logs were made to look like cannons to fool Confederate troops. Kit Carson, John Pershing and Billy the Kid all called Fort Stanton home, before it became the first federal tuberculosis sanatorium and later a detention center for German prisoners of war. Author Donna Blake Birchell relates little-known yet highly important Civil War battles, the tragedies of the Navajo and Mescalero Apache internments and other dramatic frontier stories.