But there is still a huge literary tradition in the Southwest region of the United States, and here are the books you should read either about or taking place there. Note: There is, amazingly, no crossover with this list of books about the American West. Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West by Judith Nies The King and Queen of Comezon by Denise Chávez The Old Man’s Love Story by Rudolfo Anaya Sunland by Don Waters The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge The Guardians by Ana Castillo Changing Light by Nora Gallagher The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork Walks Away Woman by Ki Longfellow In the Heart of the Canyon by Elisabeth Hyde Sizzle by Lee McClain Everybody Sees the Ants by A. S. King Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan If I Fix You by Abigail Johnson Crossing Purgatory by Gary Schanbacher Dawn Comes Early by Margaret Brownley Wraiths of the Broken Land by S. Craig Zahler Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather Meet Josefina by Valerie Tripp These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 by Nancy Turner Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman Once in a Promised Land by Laila Halaby Where they Bury You by Steven W. Kohlhagen How the World Moves: The Odyssey of an American Indian Family Family by Peter Nabokov Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and their Adventures in the American Southwest by Lesley Poling-Kempes Among Unknown Tribes by Bill Broyles et al Standing on Common Ground by Geraldo L. Cadava Trauma Red: The Making of a Surgeon in War and in America’s Cities by Peter Rhee At the Border of Empires: The Tohono O’odham, Gender, and Assimilation, 1880-1934 by Andrae Marak and Laura Tuennerman Dragoons in Apacheland by William S. Kiser Grandma’s Santo on its Head by Nasario Garcia In the Shadow of Billy the Kid: Susan McSween and the Lincoln County War by Kathleen P. Chamberlain Miera y Pacheco: A Renaissance Spaniard in Eighteenth Century New Mexico by John L. Kessell Under the Eagle: Samuel Holiday, Navajo Code Talker by Samuel Holiday and Robert McPherson House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest by Craig Childs Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keefe by Laurie Lisle Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides The Man Who Walked Through Time by Colin Fletcher The Grand Canyon and the Southwest by Ansel Adams American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest by Hannah Nordhaus
Mystery/Thriller/Suspense
The Jaguar’s Children by John Vaillant The Quiet Streets of Winslow by Judy Troy Bad Country by C. B. McKenzie Zia Summer by Rudolfo Anaya The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite Blackening Song by Aimée and David Thurlo Rage against the Dying by Becky Masterman The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman Tainted Mountain by Shannon Baker The Visitant by Kathleen O’Neal Gear Desert Heat by J. A. Jance Desert Dark by Sonja Stone Cool in Tucson by Elizabeth Gunn Spider Woman’s Daughter by Anne Hillerman
Memoir
All The Wild That Remains by David Gessner Chasing Arizona: One Man’s Yearlong Obsession with the Grand Canyon State State by Ken Lamberton Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food by Megan Kimble An Anthropologist’s Arrival by Ruth M. Underhill Red-Inked Retablos by Rigoberto González Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir by Linda Rondstat Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls Tortilla Chronicles: Growing Up in Santa Fe by Marie Romero Cash
Speculative Fiction
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi Demigods on Speedway by Aurelie Sheehan Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch Under Dark Sky Law by Tamara Boyens Taming Shadows by Fiona Skye Hounded by Kevin Hearne The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols and Rini Templeton The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer Return of the Bones by Belinda Vasquez Garcia Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis
Romance
Pieces of Sky by Kaki Warner She Who Remembers by Linda Lay Shuler The Way Home by Megan Chance What Price Paradise by Katherine Allred The Brothers Torres by Coert Voorhees Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson (A classic, 19th century Western romance) Wake Up Maggie by Beth Yarnall One True Theory of Love by Laura Fitzgerald
Short Stories and Poetry
Night at the Fiestas by Kirstin Valdez Quade Sonoran Strange by Logan Phillips The Tijuana Book of the Dead by Luis Alberto Urrea Words Like Love by Tanaya Winder Sagrado: A Photopoetics Across the Chicano Homeland by Spencer R. Herrera et al Three-Ten To Yuma and other Stories by Elmore Leonard
Picture Books
The Good Rainbow Road by Simon J. Ortiz and Michael Lapaca Camille Carries the Mail by Lisa Hodgkins and Carlos Lemos Legend of Ponciano Gutierrez and the Mountain Thieves by A. Gabriel Meléndez and Amy Córdova My Tata’s Remedies/Los Remedios de mi Tata by Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford and Antonio Castro L. Hip, Hip Hooray! It’s Monsoon Day! by Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford and Richard Johnsen What are your favorite Southwest reads?
