Cartoonist Rocky Stellar has just lost his job. Out of work for the first time in forty years, Rocky knows he is not ready for retirement and wants to rediscover his artistic passion. Seeking advice, he visits a quirky Arizona desert recluse and storyteller. Through powerful questions and stories, Padre Cisco challenges Rocky as he embarks on a journey of reflection and self-discovery. His story unfolds in unexpected ways as his desire to repair his art life and his contentious relationships with his father and daughter take precedence. Driven to find a clear path to fulfillment, Rocky must learn to balance his inner-struggles with Padre Cisco’s wisdom as he seeks to answer the padre’s pivotal question: “Are you willing to give up what you know to learn what you do not?” Padre Cisco: Conversations with a Desert Father shares the introspective journey of an out-of-work cartoonist as he searches for spiritual understanding through his own reflections and the wisdom of an Arizona storyteller. “It isn’t often I get to learn from someone who delivers the truth on a punch line.” ~ Rocky Stellar

A collection of stories that invite readers to relax, stretch out on a hammock with a glass of lemonade, and get ready for an old-fashioned journey through the peaks and valleys of life. The master storyteller, Old Man Abner Simpson, has a yarn to help cure whatever ails you.

“This deeply researched, engagingly presented, and immensely valuable book demolishes longstanding myths about Mexican California as a colorful, custom-bound world apart. In place of this fantasy past, Louise Pubols offers a history of the de la Guerras that reveals a family and a society caught up in, yet not wholly overcome by, the global economic and political developments of the first half of the nineteenth century.”—Stephen Aron, Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of the American West at the Autry National Center “The Father of All combines first-rate historical analysis with in-depth archival research. Don José de la Guerra and his extended family are fascinating historical personages, and their encounters with other Californio elites provide a compelling story, but Pubols takes us to a higher level of understanding by demonstrating the crucial role of extended family ties in the economic and political history of California during the Mexican Period. Pubols provides a convincing argument that family ties kept the prevalent political unrest from breaking out into more violent civil conflict.”—Dr. Jarrell C. Jackman, Executive Director, Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation

1934 Emil Langerzweig's public censure of Nazi collaboration forced him to flee his homeland with a young son and a dream. In Austria, his aristocratic family raised Lipizzaner horses for the Spanish Court. In America, he'd change his name to Longbranch, modify the age-old tradition, raise Thoroughbreds. Thad Longbranch, third-generation cowboy at the reins of the "Bar L," is living his grandfather's dream, confident his children will insure continuity of the dynasty. Buffered by fifteen-thousand acres in the foothills of the Rockies, his wife Sam seems content homeschooling, writing children's books. Satisfying, predictable, life is good until the letters arrive. Bearing the Colorado State Seal, the first missive poses a request that thrusts Sam into the political arena, fosters a relationship with a charming would-be Governor, jeopardizes a twenty-year marriage. Postmarked Mexico, the second letter reveals a longheld secret, a secret that threatens succession of the Longbranch family, and propels a crazed Mexican drug lord across the border to Colorado in search of an orphaned boy. Sprinkled with humor empathetic characters and villains you'll love to hate, bring to life this fast-paced tale of passion, murder, remorse and acceptance of a child who may lay claim to a fortune the last vagabond.