Mogollon Mountain Man: Nat Straw Grizzly Hunter and Trapper
Foreword by Marc Simmons, Frontispiece Drawing by Grem Lee, Cover Design by Laura Howell, 142 vintage B/W photos and illustrations, 232 pages, $19.95

Robert Nelson "Nat" Straw, 1856-1941, came to the Southwest in the 1870s. He worked on cattle drives, prospected for gold, and lived for a time with the Navajos. But most of Nat's solitary life was spent in the Mogollon Mountains, where he slept under the stars and walked the trails of the Gila Wilderness, hunting bears and wolves for the ranches in southwestern New Mexico. It was said that he could shoot the eye out of a grizzly at two hundred yards, and while his hunting skills were undisputable, Nat's amazing tales of bears and mountain lions have made him a western legend. His grizzly stories are still told around campfires in the deep canyons and high mountain meadows of the Gila Wilderness country where Nat Straw spent nearly six decades of his life.
 

The Life That Gave Me Art: Adventures and Garden Art of Mary Schaefer
By Mary Schaefer, Tucson, AZ, 520.318.1611, 168 pages, more than 150 color illustrations, $65 hardbound (ISBN 0-9763182-0-2)

Flowers of every shade and variety bloom brilliantly in Mary Schaefer`s oil paintings-many of them grown in the Arizona artist`s garden just outside her studio window. "Flowers are a great expression of hope, happiness, love, and peace," she says. Schaefer shares her inspirations and passions in the new book The Life That Gave Me Art, which includes reproductions of more than 100 works as well as photographs from her travels across the country and to Mexico, Nicaragua, France, and more. Both her adventurer`s spirit and her peaceful nature are evident in Schaefer`s paintings of gardens, architecture, humans, and animals.
 

 

Beautiful greenhorn lady with young son marries ex-rodeo cowboy in 1956 and goes to his old packmule outfit on their honeymoon in isolated Burro Creek Canyon northwest of Prescott, Arizona, 72 miles from town with no electricity, telephone, or mail delivery. She falls in love with the scenic canyon and abundant wildlife, her husband's one-man horse, and his fiercely protective cow dogs but when she sets out to become a cowgirl the oops begin and local cowboys make bets on how long she will last on the ranch. The author tells about old ranch customs and shares historic recipes she learns to prepare for her bridegroom on a sulky wood cookstove. Her 9-year-old son becomes the first child to grow up in the canyon since Indian days and due to the isolation he is homeschooled.