— Book Review —

“The Great Taos“The Great Taos

Bank Robbery”Bank Robbery”Title: “The Great Taos Bank Robbery and Other True Stories”

Author: Tony Hillerman

ISBN: 978-0-8263-5192-0

150 pages, paperback

Published: 2012 from original 1973 anthology

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, unmpress.com

By Rosanne Boyett

Beacon Staff Writer

Editor’s note: Book review articles are available online at

www.cibolabeacon.com/bookreviews.

This book is, “The real deal. The New Mexico my

dad fell in love with,” wrote Anne Hillerman in her in-

troduction.

The anthology of nine stories is interspersed with

short vignettes that describe some of the people that

author Tony Hillerman encountered during his lengthy

journalistic career. This collection was his third book.

An Oklahoma native, the author followed Route 66

west and decided to call New Mexico home.

“Just as religious converts tend to be more passionate

about their faith, Dad claimed New Mexico as home

with missionary fervor . . .” recalled his daughter Anne.

The elder Hillerman wrote these stories when he was a 40-year-old University of New Mexico graduate student. His

topics range from humorous, such as “The Great Taos Bank Robbery,” to the sad tale of an African-American cowboy who

discovered the Folsom archeological site, that was known by area residents as the Dead Horse Arroyo.

Several pieces focus on geography, including the story about how one town in Catron County was named. The area was

relatively unknown to Europeans.

“Then one morning Geronimo and his Apaches came riding through, and after that they took to calling it Quemado,”

according to the story one longtime resident told to Hillerman.

And close to Grants, in Cibola County, is Ambrosia Lake – the largest uranium ore district in the country. “The source

of fuel for nuclear desolation named Ambrosia, the perfume and nectar of the gods,” laughed the author. He goes on to site

another authority who claimed that the name originated with the drowning death of Amboriso Difunto in la laguna, the

lake. Somehow the named was changed, likely by English-speaking immigrants at a later date.

The Cold War demands for nuclear weapons brought the uranium industry into the public spotlight, especially in New

Mexico. In “Keeping Secrets from the Russians” Hillerman tells the tale of a supposedly secret nuclear mission launch that

wasn’t as “secret” as the military had hoped.

The Spanish land grants’ convoluted history receives additional notoriety in Hillerman’s rendition of the 1967 Alianza

“revolution” in Tierra Amarilla.

“These stories were written a long time ago, when I was a forty-year-old graduate student at the University of New

Mexico. I was tempted to revise some of them to correct the anachronisms and, frankly, because I think I’ve learned some

writing tricks since then. However, these footnotes will be easier,” wrote Hillerman in his Author’s Notes for the 1973 edi-

tion.

Several stories foreshadow the author’s later career as a mystery writer whose plots are based on Native American cultures,

especially the Navajo tribe.

Editor’s Note: Hillerman also wrote children’s stories including the Zuni myth that he renamed “The Boy Who Made Dragonfly,” in

addition to several nonfiction works such as “The Spell of New Mexico.”