Eugene Manlove Rhodes, who coined New Mexico's official state nickname "the Land of Enchantment," was a superlative writer of fiction in the Southwest during the early twentieth century. This new annotated edition of two of his best novels provides the ideal introduction to this unjustly neglected writer. A real-life cowboy, rancher, miner, and army scout for twenty-five years before launching his literary career, Eugene Manlove Rhodes depicted the times and terrain of southern New Mexico in popular fiction hailed for its realism. He elevated the Western novel to a literary art form. Rhodes is best remembered today for the brief novel that is generally considered his masterpiece, Paso por Aqui. Inspired by the 1905 robbery of the First National Bank of Belen, Rhodes's story follows bank robber Ross McEwen as he is pursued across the deadly wasteland of the infamous Jornada del Muerto by a posse led by legendary New Mexican lawman Pat Garrett. Like Paso por Aqui, The Desire of the Moth offers a revisionist Western featuring a hero on the lam from the law-but in this story, largely set around Las Cruces, New Mexico, the alleged criminal is actually an innocent man targeted for lynching by his political opponents. This new annotated edition of two of Rhodes's best-loved stories includes an introductory essay and notes by critic Gary Scharnhorst along with a map of Gene Rhodes's New Mexico showing important sites mentioned in the stories.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes (1869-1934) was one of New Mexico's greatest and most underappreciated writers. Many of his books were adapted for Hollywood films, including The Girl He Left Behind Him, The Desire of the Moth, and Paso por Aqui. Gary Scharnhorst is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico; the author or editor of over fifty books, including award-winning biographies of Mark Twain and Owen Wister; the past president of the Western Literature Association; and the editor of the scholarly journal American Literary Realism.
"[Rhodes's] writing stimulates fanaticism, cultism. To the faithful, he could do no wrong. . . . Certainly he mastered his material as few others in the field, in any field, have done." - Jack Schaefer, author of Shane "Rhodes is the peer of Owen Wister in portraying the cowboy in his code, and often . . . the equal of such factual narrators as Andy Adams and Will James in presenting the mode of his working life. In variety and scope, he is the best of the four." - Walter Van Tilburg Clark, author of The Ox-Bow Incident "The finest [novels] ever written about that strange and violent and beautiful era in American life. . . . The only body of fiction devoted to the cattle kingdom which is both true to it and written by an artist in prose." - Bernard DeVoto, author of Mark Twain's America and The Course of Empire
