"Willa Cather's novel of one man's life as he encounters the harsh landscape of the New Mexico desert and the people who inhabit it, with an introduction by National Book Award finalist Kali Fajardo-Anstine"--

THE DEAD MAN'S JOURNEY—Journada del Muerte, the locals called it: the blistering ocean of sand and sage between the Rio Grande River to the west and the Sacramento mountain range to the east. The bones of men and horses had bleached in the mile-high desert for three hundred years. Spanish conquistadors were the first white men to explore this new furnace of the Southeastern New Mexico Territory—and the first to perish. In the thin air,...

When his daughter, Elena, is kidnapped by a band of invading Texas Rangers after the American Civil War, Baca uses his old Cibolero skills to track them to Texas. Terrified for his daughter's safety, he plunges into a strange new world--and as days pass without any sign of Elena, Baca fears for her life--and his own.