Betsy James

 Roadsouls

Roadsouls explores the power of art and creativity for transforming not only ones own life but also the world one lives in. Timid Duuni has spent her life as abused and guarded property. Blind, arrogant Raím is determined to be again what he once was: hunter, lover, young lord of the earth. Desperate to escape their lives, the two lift up their hands to the passing Roadsoul caravan, and are literally flung together naked. Each of them soon learns that saying yes to the Roadsouls is more than just accepting an invitation to a new life—its a commitment that can’t be reversed. For Duuni and Raím, nothing is as it was. Lost to their old lives, hating each other, they are swept out of their cruel old certainties into an unknown, unknowable, ever-changing world of journey and carnival, artists and wrestlers and thieves. Behind them, inexorable, pads a lion. Inexorable, too, is Duuni and Raím’s inevitable encounter with it, an encounter that will change everything.

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Breathing Stone: Living Small in a Southwest Village

In the early 1990s, writer, artist, and backcountry hiker Betsy James rented an old adobe near the center of a New Mexican village. She had worked for years with cultures very like those that had shaped Placitas—in Mexico, Albuquerque, Zuni Pueblo. She gave this place her best moral attention, and recorded what she could. This is the result.

"Breathing Stone: Living Small in a Southwest Village immerses you in the magic of the New Mexico desert. Mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and plants spring to life through the sharp, observant eye of Betsy James. This book is an unexpected gem sparkling in sunlight"

—Judith Schiess Avila, author of Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII

"[Besty James] has bested Thoreau, in my opinion, with a keener eye and a broader sensitivity to her environment.... This book is a genuine addition to New Mexico literature."

—Don Bullis, historian, New Mexico Centennial Author

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