Miles evokes Indian, Mexican and Anglo traditions that converge in this area in this collection of tales. They cover supernatural phenomena such as the Marfa lights and water witching, murders, feuds, and lost treasures.

Here among other things are legends of demons and magic; a collection of corridos (Mexican folk ballads) of the Big Bend; tales of treasure like the Terlingua Bootlegger''s Hoard; a mini-history of the mining community of Shafter; and a profile of Maggie Smith, longtime border storekeeper, dealer in candelilla wax and folk healer.

The winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, this intriguing anthology of stories explores the complex twists and turns of human relationships in such works as "Fog," "Thanksgiving," and the title story, about a grieving widower, feeling the onslaught of age, who finds himself attracted to a young birdwatcher no older than his daughter.

Most people visit Big Bend National Park and have a wonderful, incident-free vacation. For a tiny number, however, a simple mistake, unpreparedness, or pure bad luck has lead to catastrophe. Massive rescue efforts and fatalities, while rare, do happen at the park. Heat stroke, dehydration, hypothermia, drowning, falls, lightning, and even murder have claimed victims at Big Bend. This book chronicles selected rescues and tragedies that have happened there since the early 1980s. The lessons you learn reading this book may save your life.

The Big Bend region of Texas—variously referred to as “El Despoblado” (the uninhabited land), “a land of contrasts,” “Texas’ last frontier,” or simply as part of the Trans-Pecos—enjoys a long, colorful, and eventful history, a history that began before written records were maintained. With Big Bend’s Ancient and Modern Past, editors Bruce A. Glasrud and Robert J. Mallouf provide a helpful compilation of articles originally published in the Journal of Big Bend Studies, reviewing the unique past of the Big Bend area from the earliest habitation to 1900. Scholars of the region investigate not only the peoples who have successively inhabited it but also the nature of the environment and the responses to that environment. As the studies in this book demonstrate, the character of the region has, to a great extent, dictated its history. The study of Big Bend history is also the study of borderlands history. Studying and researching across borders or boundaries, whether national, state, or regional, requires a focus on the factors that often both unite and divide the inhabitants. The dual nature of citizenship, of land holding, of legal procedures and remedies, of education, and of history permeate the lives and livelihoods of past and present residents of the Big Bend.

Anecdotes about Maggie Smith abound, but Bill Wright’s The Whole Damn Cheese is the first book devoted entirely to the woman whose life in Big Bend country has become the stuff of legend. For more than twenty years—from 1943 until her death in 1965—Maggie Smith served folks on both sides of the border as doctor, lawyer, midwife, herbalist, banker, self-appointed justice of the peace, and coroner. As she put it, she was “the whole damn cheese” in Hot Springs, Texas. She was also an accomplished smuggler with a touch of romance as well as larceny in her heart. Maggie’s family history is virtually a history of the Texas frontier, and her story outlines the beginnings and early development of Big Bend National Park. Her travels between Boquillas, San Vicente, Alpine, and Hot Springs define Maggie’s career and illustrate her unique relationships with the people of the border. Capturing the rough individualism and warm character of Maggie Smith, author Bill Wright demonstrates why this remarkable frontier woman has become an indelible figure in the history of Texas.

Travel deeper into the Texas outback with writer-historian Mike Cox as he recounts the lesser-known stories from Alpine, Fort Davis and Marfa. Revisit the grandeur of Alpine's Holland Hotel, peer through the telescope at the McDonald Observatory and dip your toes in the water hole at Ernst Tinaja, if you dare. Travel back to a time when the Comanche Trail stretched one thousand miles from Kansas to Mexico, making the Big Bend difficult to defend and impossible to resist trying. Celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of Benito Juarez's decisive defeat of the French at Pueblo in 1867. If nothing else, come for the lore and history that is as extensive in the Big Bend region as the mountain passes and desert stretches themselves.

"Centennial series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A & M University ; no. 46." A collection of tall tales and legends of the Big Bend Region of Texas.

The first anthology to focus specifically on the topic of Chicana expressive culture, Chicana Traditions features the work of native scholars: Chicanas engaged in careers as professors and students, performing artists and folklorists, archivists and museum coordinators, and community activists. Blending narratives of personal experience with more formal, scholarly discussions, Chicana Traditions tells the insider story of a professional woman mariachi performer and traces the creation and evolution of the escaramuza charra (all-female precision riding team) within the male-dominated charreada, or Mexican rodeo. Other essays cover the ranchera (country or rural) music of the transnational performer Lydia Mendoza, the complex crossover of Selena's Tejano music, and the bottle cap and jar lid art of Goldie Garcia. Framed by the Chicana feminist concept of the borderlands, a formative space where cultures and identities converge, Chicana Traditions offers a lively commentary on how women continue to invent, reshape, and transcend their traditional culture.

This volume supplements the acclaimed three volume set published in 1986 and consists of an annotated listing of American Studies monographs published between 1984 and 1988. There are more than 6,000 descriptive entries in a wide range of categories: anthropology and folklore, art and architecture, history, literature, music, political science, popular culture, psychology, religion, science and technology, and sociology.