Marcia Hatfield Daudistel

In the vast, sparsely populated area of West Texas known as the Big Bend, life takes place on a different scale. The nearest neighbor can be forty miles away, perhaps located not just in another town but another country, the border historically less obvious than it is today. In the small-town, bicultural atmosphere of the Big Bend, musicians from both sides of the Rio Grande come together, creating music that spans genre, culture, and international borders. From Ojinaga, Mexico, to Alpine, Texas, and most points in between, writer Marcia Hatfield Daudistel and photographer Bill Wright have gathered, through hours of interviews, a trove of anecdotes, images, and personal recollections that explore what makes music - and musicians - in the Big Bend slightly different from anything found elsewhere. Playing big band music one night for a dance at Marfa Army Air Field and border polkas the next evening at a quinceaÑera; playing a traditional norteÑo and conjunto but throwing in the saxophone to change the dynamic; making a living with their music or keeping their day jobs and playing when they can: these are the stories that demonstrate the cultural and musical versatility required for musicians in the Big Bend. From the porch at Terlingua's Starlight Theatre to the jukebox at Lajitas, Across the Border and Back: Music in the Big Bend features the people, the history, the local color, the venues, and, above all, the distinctive attitude that have defined music-making in this place, at once one of the most remote and most unique in the country.

Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown. Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.

Winner, Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association, 2015The Texas of vast open spaces inhabited by independent, self-reliant men and women may be more of a dream than a reality for the state’s largely urban population, but it still exists in the Big Bend. One of the most sparsely settled areas of the United States, the Big Bend attracts people who are willing to forego many modern conveniences for a lifestyle that proclaims “don’t fence me in.” Marcia Hatfield Daudistel and Bill Wright believe that the character traits exemplified by folks in the Big Bend-including self-sufficiency, friendliness, and neighborliness-go back to the founding of the state. In this book, they introduce us to several dozen Big Bend residents-old and young, long-settled and recently arrived, racially diverse-who show us what it means to be an authentic Texan. Interviewing people in Marathon, Big Bend National Park, Terlingua, Redford, Presidio, Alpine, Marfa, Valentine, Balmorhea, Limpia Crossing, and Fort Davis, Daudistel and Wright discover the reasons why residents of the Big Bend make this remote area of Texas their permanent home. In talking to ranchers and writers, entrepreneurs and artists, people living off the grid and urban refugees, they find a common willingness to overcome difficulties through individual skill and initiative. As one interviewee remarks, you have to have a lot of “try” in you to make a life in the Big Bend. Bill Wright’s photographs of the people and landscapes are a perfect complement to the stories of these authentic Texans. Together, these voices and images offer the most complete, contemporary portrait of the Texas Big Bend.

In Grace & Gumption: The Women of El Paso, thirteen contributors trace the history of El Paso from the distaff side. The women who settled El Paso faced an unusual reality. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo changed the border, and people who were previously citizens of Mexico - living in their native country, speaking their native language - were suddenly citizens of the United States, forced to speak a foreign language. Editor Marcia Hatfield Daudistel gathers together authoritative voices who examine the bicultural identity of this city through the various roles the women assumed: artist and muse, philanthropist, healer, writer, historian, nun, suffragette, and businesswoman. The result is a new look at this city nestled between rivers, mountains, a military base, and Mexico. The women in this volume are just a few who left a legacy in El Paso. Their stories are kept alive through the memories of their families, the oral history of the Comadres, and in the history books. Their accomplishments were hard-won and required courage, persistence, inspiration, and especially grace and gumption. Contributors include Adair Margo, Mimi R. Gladstein, Yolanda Leyva, Nancy Miller Hamilton, Irasema Coronado, Lois Marchino, Deane Mansfield-Kelley, Meredith Abarca, Susan Goodman Novick, Lucy Fischer-West, Brenda Risch, Evelyn Posey, and Daudistel.