The Milagro Beanfield War

The Milagro Beanfield War is the first book in John Nichols's New Mexico trilogy (“Gentle, funny, transcendent.” —The New York Times Book Review), later adapted to film by Robert Redford. Joe Mondragon, a feisty hustler with a talent for trouble, slammed his battered pickup to a stop, tugged on his gumboots, and marched into the arid patch of ground. Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time-the Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield victories. Gradually, the small farmers and sheepmen begin to rally to Joe's beanfield as the symbol of their lost rights and their lost lands. And downstate in the capital, the Anglo water barons and power brokers huddle in urgent conference, intent on destroying that symbol before it destroys their multimillion-dollar land-development schemes. The tale of Milagro's rising is wildly comic and lovingly tender, a vivid portrayal of a town that, half-stumbling and partly prodded, gropes its way toward its own stubborn salvation.

This final volume in John Nichols's acclaimed New Mexico trilogy, (“Gentle, funny, transcendent.” —New York Times Book Review). Like its predecessors, The Nirvana Blues is a lusty, visionary novel that blends comedy and tragedy, reality and fantasy, tenderness and bite, to illuminate some very troubling truths about America—truths no less pointed and accurate today than they were decades ago. The seventies are over. All across America, the overgrown kids of the middle class are getting their acts together—and getting older. The once-tight Chicano community of Chamisaville is long gone, and the Anglo power brokers control almost everything. Joe Miniver—faithful husband, loving father, and all-around good guy—is about to sink roots. To buy the land he wants, he dreams up a coke scam that will net him the necessary bread. Joe is also about to embark on a series of erotic adventures with three headstrong women, bringing him face-to-face with the terrors (and absurdity) of the modern man-woman scene. The Nirvana Blues is part of John Nichols's New Mexico trilogy, which includes The Milagro Beanfield War and The Magic Journey

Spanning forty years, the second book in John Nichols's New Mexico trilogy, The Magic Journey, tells the tale of how relentless progress transformed a rural backwater into a boomtown. Boom times came to the forgotten little southwestern town of Chamisaville just as the rest of America was in the Great Depression. They came when a rattletrap bus loaded with stolen dynamite blew sky-high, leaving behind a giant gushing hot spring. Within minutes, the town's wheeler-dealers had organized, and within a year, Chamisaville was flooded with tourists and pilgrims, and the wheeler-dealers were rich. At first, it was a magic time for Chamisaville—almost as if every day were a holiday. But the euphoria gradually dissipated, and the land-hungry developers, speculators, and interlopers moved in. Finally, the day came when Chamisaville's people found themselves all but displaced, their children no longer heirs to their land or their tradition. With mounting intensity, The Magic Journey reaches a climax that is tragically foreordained. A sensitive, vital, and honest chronicle of life in America's Southwest, it is also an incisive commentary on what America has become on its road to progress. The Magic Journey is part of John Nichols's New Mexico trilogy, which includes The Milagro Beanfield War and The Nirvana Blues.

“A hilarious, sad . . . all too true novel about the rough underside of a college love affair.”—John Knowles, author of A Separate Peace When eighteen-year-old Jerry Payne first meets Pookie Adams at the Friarsburg, Oklahoma, bus depot, he is hardly aware that this moment marks the beginning of the most memorable love affair of his life. Overwhelmed (and yet secretly enchanted) by her zany, rambling monologue, Jerry is relieved to leave her in St. Louis as he continues to New York. Thinking he’s seen the last of her, he heads off to college, only to be pursued by seventeen lengthy letters, and before he knows it he’s involved with a seemingly crazy, startlingly honest girl who adores him. During the next two years, Pookie helps Jerry leave behind the fun-seeking, beer-blasted fraternity man he has become, as she teaches him to open his heart to her. Then, almost as suddenly as she appeared in his life, she disappears from it, leaving in her wake an eternal trail of love and wonder.

A dazzling, darkly comic novel by the author of "The Sterile Cuckoo, The Voice of the Butterfly" looks at chaotic relationships fraught with conservation efforts. Funny and touching, Nichols's novel is a wild ride through the lunacies of the postmodern age.

In My Heart Belongs to Nature, Nichols records his forty-five-year connection to the Taos valley and its mountains, where he still lives.

Jonathan Kepler wants to climb Spoon Mountain with his grown son and daughter on his sixty-fifth birthday in three weeks. The kids, Ben and Miranda, think he’s crazy. For starters, Spoon Mountain is almost the tallest alpine peak in New Mexico. Jonathan’s health is terrible. Still reeling from his third, nearly fatal, divorce, he has a rotten heart, serious asthma, and a fed-up girlfriend who is about to drop him like a bad habit. Once a celebrated novelist, Hollywood screenwriter, and environmental activist, Jonathan is now tottering at the ragged end of his career and yearning to make amends to his children for his past sins before it’s too late. Years ago, Spoon Mountain was very special to the Kepler family. They once shared halcyon days in the wilderness. Can they go home again? Does Spoon Mountain offer redemption . . . or annihilation? And why is getting there so laden with pratfalls? John Nichols is at his hilarious and poignant best in this rollicking tale of love, anarchy, and the awesome Rocky Mountains. It is drop-dead comedy with an inspiring and beautiful message.

Conflicts between Hispanic farmers and developers made for compelling reading in The Milagro Beanfield War, the famous novel of life in a northern New Mexico village in which tradition triumphs over modernity. But as cities grow and industries expand, are acequias, or community irrigation ditches, a wise and efficient use of water in the arid Southwest? José Rivera presents the contemporary case for the value of acequias and the communities they nurture in the river valleys of southern Colorado and New Mexico. Recognizing that "water is the lifeblood of the community," Rivera delineates an acequia culture based on a reciprocal relationship between irrigation and community. The acequia experience grows out of a conservation ethic and a tradition of sharing that should be recognized and preserved in an age of increasing competition for scarce water resources. "A worthwhile contribution to the future management of water resources."--Professor Michael C. Meyer

Bill Ayers was born into privilege and is today a highly respected educator. In the late 1960s he was a young pacifist who helped to found one of the most radical political organizations in U.S. history, the Weather Underground. In a new era of antiwar activism and suppression of protest, his story, Fugitive Days, is more poignant and relevant than ever.