Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West
An epic story that restores the horse to its rightful place in the history of the American West, and asks why we, a cowboy nation, have turned our backs on the mustang. It follows the wild horse from its evolutionary origins on this continent to its return with conquistadors to its bloody battles on the old frontier to its present plight as it fights for survival on the vanishing range. Along the way, you meet some of the great equine and human characters in American history, including Comanche, the gallant horse that survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Bugz, the survivor of the 1998 massacre of 34 wild horses outside Reno, and Wild Horse Annie, who fought for protections for mustangs and burros for twenty years, achieving a final victory in 1971 when Richard Nixon signed a federal law assigning them a home on the range - now being unravelled.
Twentynine Palms:
A True Story of Murder, Marines and the Mojave
August 2, 1991, Twentynine Palms, California: a troubled Marine who has recently returned from the Gulf War savagely murders two young girls. One was about to turn sixteen, the other twenty-one.
Exquisitely and inexorably, Deanne Stillman uses this tragedy as a prism through which she examines a rootless culture of fatherless families, shattered dreams, and relentless violence. She also traces the family histories of each murder victim back for generations, in one case to the Donner Party and the other to a shack in the Philippines. In haunting, vivid prose, she creates a far-reaching story of America itself, carrying us into the empty white heart of the Mojave, as we meet and come to know the modern nomads who turn to the West for salvation, only to be devoured by its false promise.
Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango
For Deanne Stillman, Joshua Tree National Park is a temple, stadium, birthplace of turkey tetrazzini, and the ultimate wireless connection. With crisp and impassioned narrative, she takes the reader through the park's ancient and modern history, its geology, flora, and fauna, including a talking cactus, wiseguy pictographs, and rocks in the shape of the late New York Yankees manager Billy Martin. Stunning photographs by Galen Hunt further accentuate the gorgeous landscape, highlighting the growing need to preserve this sacred and mysterious space where the streets have no names - but will soon if civilization continues its merry and heedless march.
