by Marcy Botwick, NMSL Southwest Librarian
In New Mexico color saturates the natural world and cultural landscape. From Tierra Amarilla and Red River to Pena Blanca, White Sands, Red Rocks Canyon and Silver City, our place names reflect the many shades of desert and mountains. New Mexico celebrations add community color each year — from the Gathering of Nations in April to the many fiestas and festivals in summer and fall and finally to the luminaria glowing in December. Artists — native-born and from far-away places – have long been drawn here to record our state’s kaleidoscope of people, places and experiences in books, poems, songs, dances and paintings.
I had this vivid mix in mind as I put together an adult reading list to help celebrate the Summer Reading 2025 theme of Color Our World. The New Mexico State Library helps promote summertime reading and library programming by creating resources like the following list for use by patrons and public libraries all over the state. For Color Our World, I combed the shelves of the state’s Southwest Collection for book titles that contained a color or the word “color.” Though it’s a simple idea, there are 2,400 books that fit the criteria with a wide range from which to choose. Memoirs, environmental histories, murder mysteries, poetry collections, academic treatises, paperbacks, pamphlets and even rare books by artists, explorers and gold hunters were in the list.
I found a few other odd and interesting collection statistics about color in book titles as I considered the options. Though visual artists might be the first to mind, poetry collections and non-fiction actually had the most titles that included a color. Gold and red were most common with both nearly doubling the next closest cluster — silver, green, turquoise and blue. It may be that gold and red were most common because they are colors of the state flag. It is more likely that gold was most common because there are many books on the gold rush and the myths and tales surrounding its discovery. Finally, pink and yellow outranked black and, rainbow, unfortunately came in last.
The works reviewed below are just a few from a longer list which you can find on our website at Southwest Collection Reading Lists. Check your local public library collection, or come into the New Mexico State Library and apply for a library card to start borrowing print materials. You can also find many of the books as e-books or audiobooks in NM Reads, an online platform that is free to all New Mexico residents. I hope the books are a fitting reflection of the many colorful experiences found in the state of New Mexico and the greater Southwest. Wishing you and your readers a summer full of interesting and even inspiring reading.
ART
Silver and Stone – Mark Bahti
Mark Bahti, owner of Bahti Indian Arts, is a second-generation art dealer, researcher and author on Native American art. Deeply engaged in his subject, Bahti interviewed over 47 artists from all over the Southwest centering their lives and experiences in this beautifully photographed collection.
The World of Flower Blue: Pop Chalee: An artistic biography – Margaret Cesa
Pop Chalee was an artist and cultural icon in the early twentieth century who trained in painting at the Santa Fe Indian School. Her paintings, jewelry, textile designs and murals can be found in museums across the country. Margaret Cesa, the author of this biography, spent years talking with Chalee, recording her stories and weaving them into a beautifully rendered book about this engaging and influential native artist.
FICTION
Black Sun – Rebecca Roanhorse
The first in Rebecca Roanhorse’s multi-award-winning fantasy trilogy, Between Earth and Sky, Black Sun introduces the reader to a new epic world based on a hybrid reimagining of pre-Columbian American cultures. Seen through the eyes of four main characters, the story continues in the sequels Fevered Star and Mirrored Heavens.
Red Water – Judith Freeman
Freeman’s historical novel is narrated by three sister wives of John D. Lee, a member of Brigham Young’s inner circle. The chaos of the Mormon frontier journey and the difficult work of creating new settlements is seen through the eyes of these very different characters. The narrative journeys of the women frame deeper reflections on the meaning of love and faith.
Silver Canyon – Louis L’Amour
This 1956 novel is a classic L’Amour western about Matt Brennan, a gunfighter who tries to settle down for love. Instead, Brennan becomes embroiled in a longstanding feud between ranchers for control of a small town and land. Written with characteristic attention to place, the book is set just over the northern New Mexico border in San Juan County, Utah.
HISTORY
Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves – Art T. Burton
Burton chronicles both the life and the legend of a celebrated peace officer in the Indian Territories of the late 1800s. Reeves was born in Arkansas as a slave and escaped to the Indian territories during the American Civil War. He was renowned as a highly skilled detective, marksman, tracker and lawman who played a pivotal role in peacekeeping at a very violent time in the western territories.
Color in the Ancestral Pueblo Southwest – Marit Munson
This interdisciplinary study establishes the cultural importance of color to all societies and explores its role in ancient Puebloan communities. Noting that “we are not accustomed to imaging the past in color in part because it is often depicted in black and white,” the essays in this collection change traditional views of the archaeological record in the Southwestern United States with great nuance and scholarship.
Little Gray Men: Roswell and the Rise of Popular Culture – Toby Smith
Smith reports on the role of Roswell, New Mexico as the world-wide epicenter of all things alien in this well researched and humorous book. He examines how the event changed life in the small town itself as well as its far-reaching impact on popular culture worldwide particularly in science fiction, tv and movies.
Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains – Jan MacKell
Written in a conversational and engaging style, this book brings alive the stories of well- and lesser-known women who inhabited the famed brothels and bordellos of the western United States. With solid research and astute commentary, MacKell makes plain the complex social conditions leading women to and keeping them in prostitution during this transitional time and place.
MYSTERY
Red, Green, or Murder – Steven F. Havill
This serial follows the careers of two law enforcement agents, former Sheriff Bill Gastner, and current undersheriff Estell Reyes-Guzman, as they unravel two mysterious deaths in their New Mexico cattle ranching community. It is the tenth book in the 27-book series.
Aimee & David Thurlo
The husband-and-wife team of Aimee and David Thurlo wrote more than 75 mysteries. Of the 17 books in the Ella Clah series, five have colorful titles. Protagonist Ella Clah is a former FBI agent and a special investigator for the Navajo Police Department who now works on the Navajo nation. The books are best read in order and luckily the first in the series is colorful.
- Blackening Song – #1
- Red Mesa – #6
- White Thunder – # 10
- Turquoise Girl – #12
- Black Thunder – #16
Judith Van Giesen
Van Giessen wrote two mystery series both set in New Mexico and centered on female amateur detectives. Neither series needs to be read in order. Neil Hamel, the protagonist of the first series, is an Albuquerque based lawyer. In Parrot Blues, Hamel is hired to track both a missing wife and a missing indigo macaw pulling her into the dangerous world of rare bird smuggling. In The Stolen Blue, we meet Claire Reynier, an archivist and librarian, with a habit of stumbling into mysteries as she travels the state searching for rare books for the University of New Mexico’s collections. The Stolen Blue is the first in the Reynier series and is an absorbing, quick read.
NATURE
Horizontal Yellow – Dan Flores
Flores, a history professor originally from Texas, borrows the Navajo term for the Southwest as the title for mediations on the recent environmental history of the greater southwest. His writing is evocative and complex weaving together environmentalism, American history and his own memories of travels in this wilderness.
Hot, Dry, Color Garden – Nan Sterman
Sterman, a garden writer and experienced horticulturist, shares 150 beautiful plants that will add color to Southwest gardens. The book contains a gallery of photographs and general advice on structuring and maintaining low water gardens.
POETRY
Blue Corn Tongue: Poems in the Mouth of the Desert –Amber McCrary
Diné poet, Amber McCrary, contrasts her origins in the northern high desert with her developing relationships in the Sonoran desert through the lens of plants in each region. McCrary’s metaphoric identity shifts from the title’s blue corn, a plant which has sustained the Diné people, to the ancient Saguro cactus which stand as witness to the changing environment around them. McCrary also weaves resonant and current coming of age stories into these poems.
Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Letter: 50 Poems for 50 Years – Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo, the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, is considered a national treasure and principal poetic voice for the entire country. Fortunately, she chose a colorful title for a 2022 compilation published to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. The poems in this volume are deeply affecting and universal stories of love, grief and hope that also reflect Harjo’s indigenous experience and perspective.
YOUNG ADULT
The Green Glass Sea & White Sands, Red Menace – Ellen Klages
Klages’ two young adult historical fiction novels explore specifically New Mexican experience with broader themes and implications. Set around World War II, the books’ main character Dewey Kerrigan, moves first to the new town of Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, then to White Sands as work on missiles continues to occupy her scientific parents. The Green Glass Sea won the 2007 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction.