The poetic proverbs known to nuevomexicanos as dichos are particular to their places of origin. In these reflections on the dichos of the Chimayó Valley in northern New Mexico native son Don J. Usner has written a memoir that is also a valuable source of information on the rich language and culture of the region. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs that Usner, who is also known for his photographic work, took of the people and places that he writes about, this book is a one-of-a-kind introduction to the real New Mexico. Usner has known Chimayó since he was a boy visiting his grandmother and the other village elders, who taught him genealogies going back to family origins in Spain. The Spanish he learned there was embedded in dichos and cuentos. This book is the result of Usner’s research into these memorable sayings, and it preserves a language and a culture on the verge on dissolution. It is a gateway into a uniquely New Mexican way of life.

Winner, 2018 Paul J. Foik Award for Best Book on Catholic History in the American Southwest, presented by the Texas Catholic Historical Society The remarkable history of the Santuario de Chimayó, the church whose world-renowned healing powers have drawn visitors to its steps for centuries. Nestled in a valley at the feet of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, the Santuario de Chimayó has been called the most important Catholic pilgrimage site in America. To experience the Santuario’s miraculous healing dirt, pilgrims and visitors first walk into the cool, adobe church, proceeding up an aisle to the altar with its magnificent crucifix. They then turn left to enter a low-slung room filled with cast-off crutches, a statue of the Santo Niño de Atocha, and photos of thousands of people who have been prayed for in the exact spot they are standing. An adjacent room, stark by contrast, contains little but a hole in the floor, known as the pocito. From this well in the earth, the Santuario’s half a million annual visitors gather handfuls of holy dirt, celebrated for two hundred years for its purported healing properties. The book tells the fascinating stories of the Pueblo and Nuevomexicano Catholic origins of the site and the building of the church, the eventual transfer of the property to the Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe, and the modern pilgrimage of believers alongside thousands of tourists. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as fieldwork in Chimayó, Brett Hendrickson examines the claims that various constituencies have made on the Santuario, its stories, dirt, ritual life, commercial value, and aesthetic character. The importance of the story of the Santuario de Chimayó goes well beyond its sacred dirt, to illuminate the role of Southwestern Hispanics and Catholics in American religious history and identity. The healing powers and marvel of the Santuario shine through the pages of Hendrickson’s book, allowing readers of all kinds to feel like they have stepped inside an institution in American and religious history.

Offers a collection of folktales from Chimayo, New Mexico, in English and Spanish as retold by the author's grandmother, Benigna Chavez, who was born in 1898, along with an account of her life and her world.

Millicent Rogers assembled a stellar collection of Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo jewelry during the late 1940s and early 1950s, creating the basis of Taos's Millicent Rogers Museum.

An examination of the secret world of children that shows how important special places are to a child's development.

This book of stories and recipes introduces two eccentric families that would never have eaten together, let alone exchanged recipes, but for the improbable marriage of the author’s parents: a nuevomexicano from Taos and a painter who came from Texas to New Mexico to study art. Recalling the good and the terrible cooks in her family, Anita Rodríguez also shares the complications of navigating a safe path among contradictory cultural perspectives. She takes us from the mountain villages of New Mexico in the 1940s to sipping mint juleps on the porch of a mansion in the South, and also on a prolonged pilgrimage to Mexico and back again to New Mexico. Accompanied by Rodríguez’s vibrant paintings—including scenes of people eating on fiesta nights and plastering an adobe church—Coyota in the Kitchen shows how food reflects the complicated family histories that shape our lives.