Events:

Read about my tour of 18th-century Jesuit missions in Central and Eastern Sonora State, Mexico

On February 17-21, 2008, I accompanied the Uhagón family (José Enrique Uhagón Foxá, his wife Angélica and their son Ricardo Uhagón Vives) on a tour of the old Jesuit missions in Sonora, Mexico. This is the family that has owned La Caridad Monastery (see The Storks of La Caridad and "Sleuthing for Ignaz") for over a century and a half. Ricardo Uhagón is interested in making a film not only of Storks, but also of novels (forthcoming) about Father Ignaz' service in the Sonora missions. We visited the central area of missions, including two formerly served by Father Ignaz (Ygnacio) and many that he must have known-most of which are now serving as parish churches. The missions visited included Guevavi, Cucurpe, Ures, Baviácora, Aconchi, San Felipe, Huépac, Banámichi and Arizpe (For photos, see "Tour of 18th-Century Jesuit Missions" under Events Past, below). We also drove across rugged mountains to Moctezuma to see the impressive church of Oposura, returning northward through the copper-mining town of Cananea, crossing the border at Naco, where there was NO traffic and we were cleared in minutes. We made a stop in Tombstone, AZ, where the Uhagóns were particularly delighted with souvenirs of the OK Corral. Europeans are true-blue fans of old Hollywood Westerns, it would seem! Special thanks go to René Córdova, our chauffeur and guide, who supplied us with all sorts of information: historical, botanical, political, and religious. René has an encyclopedic mind and vast culture.

I attended the High Desert Book Fair in Sierra Vista on March 15, with time before and after to visit friends there and in Tucson, and to work in the Archive of Ethnohistory at the University of Tucson Library. There, I discovered still more unpublished letters between 18th-century Jesuit missionaries in Sonora, a lively correspondence that abruptly ceased with the Expulsion in 1767.

From April 3-6 I attended the conference of the Renaissance Society of America in Chicago, to deliver a paper on 16th and early 17th-century Jesuit scholastic theater as foundation for the great French Classical theater of the 17th century.

Seven Cities of Mud was officially published on April 15, 2008. Since the book was supposed to have come out in the fall of 2007, I was able to hold a pre-publication book signing on December 6, 2007, using advance promotional copies.

I spent ten days (April 14-23) on silent retreat at the Jesuit Spirituality Center at St. Charles College in Grand Coteau, LA. The Center is beautifully situated, with two-hundred-year-old live oaks, some at least six feet in diameter. The grounds are beautiful, planted with azaleas, camellias, and crepe myrtle. Walkways and benches afford opportunities for silent contemplation.

May 29-June 1 saw me in El Paso, Texas, lecturing and signing books (Apache Lance, Franciscan Cross, The Storks of La Caridad, and Seven Cities of Mud) at four branch libraries and the central library. Audiences were receptive and sales were brisk. I was also able to visit good friends while there-James and Bobbi Major and Fr. Louis Lambert, S.J., of Sacred Heart Church.

The Chama Book Festival took place June 6-8 in Chama, NM, near the Colorado border, with honored guest John Nichols (of The Milagro Beanfield War and much more). John is a delightful person, an excellent speaker with a wealth of information about the publishing and film industries. Again, I met many new friends, visited with old ones, and sold quite a few books.

Four days after my return from Chama, I drove to Atlanta, picked up my friend Ralph Freedman, and we spent four weeks traveling (June 12-July7) spending two of them in Maine on Mt Desert Island, hiking among mountains and lakes in Acadia National Park and along the cliff-bound sea-coast. We also indulged shamelessly in seafood, caught the same day.

Park University named me Alumna of the Year. I flew to Kansas City and was taken from there to Parkville, MO, to spend Alumni Weekend and to receive the award at a banquet on June 21. I most warmly thank those who nominated me and Park University for a memorable occasion. I am truly honored.

Upcoming

I plan to travel in the vicinity of San Antonio and perhaps to New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado to sign and sell copies of Seven Cities of Mud. These short trips should take place between July 16 and October.

In October, from the 13th-18th I will participate in the online conference for writers, Muse on Line. On the 24th-26th, the annual Women Writing the West Conference will take place in San Antonio. From the 27th to November 8, I will once again travel to Germany to wrap up research on the life of Ignaz Pfefferkorn, S.J. I also hope to return to the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences to work on the fourth volume of the Pfefferkorn mystery series.

Events Past

2008

On January 11, 2008, I completed and submitted my entirely rewritten and re-thought mystery novel Sonora Wind. It will be the second book in the Pfefferkorn S.J. trilogy, The Storks of La Caridad the third.

2007

2007: After the tour of the 18th-century Jesuit missions in Sonora last January, my next book-related trip was to Sierra Vista, AZ, for the second annual High Desert Crimes Book Fair, on March 24. The trip lasted from the 22nd-27th, since I also visited friends I had met on previous book tours in El Paso, Bobi and Jim Majors, and friends met on my first Sonora Mission tour in October, 2005. I also took the opportunity to work in the Archive of Ethnohistory at the University Library at the U. of Arizona, Tucson, and found many unpublished letters between 18th-century Jesuit missionaries in the field and their superior, Francisco Zevallos (Ceballos), in Mexico City. These I have used in rewriting Sonora Wind.

April 27-May13 was spent as a Resident at The Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences in the northern Georgia mountains (part of the Smoky Mountains, really), finishing my re-edited and rewritten version of the mystery novel, I'll Come To Thee By Moonlight, now titled Sonora Moonlight. The book went to my publisher, Twilight Times Books at the end of the residency. It will be the foundation of the new Pfefferkorn, S.J. trilogy, forthcoming sometime late in 2008.

From June 26-July 25, my friend and assistant Ralph Freedman and I traveled and worked in Germany, collecting more information on Ignaz (Ygnacio) Pfefferkorn, S.J., for the projected fourth mystery novel. More about this at the end of the "Sleuthing for Ignaz" piece.

I spent the week of August 26-September 1 in Monterrey, Mexico, where I gave a lecture on "Los Jesuitas en Sonora" to the Centro de Estudios Guadalupanos. The talk was well received, and I have been accepted as honorary member of the Center.

The annual conference of the writer's group Women Writing the West took place again on October 18-21 in Colorado Springs. Once again, I enjoyed the beauty of the setting and the wealth of information from sessions and panels, and the fruitful and pleasant networking.

November 8 saw me in Albuquerque at the New Mexico Book Awards Banquet, where I was awarded Finalist status in two categories: Best Historical Novel and Best Book on the Southwest. The book: Apache Lance, Franciscan Cross. I stayed in Albuquerque, since I was scheduled to lecture on my background research for Seven Cities of Mud and discoveries along the way, for a joint meeting of The Friends of the Coronado State Monument and the Sandoval County Historical Society in Bernalillo, NM, on November 18. Question-and-answer session was extremely lively, since those folks certainly know their local history.

On my return to San Antonio, I gave a similar lecture on November 20 to Los Vaqueros, the local chapter of The Westerners, a group dedicated to study of the history of the Southwest. On Friday November 27, I gave that lecture to the San Antonio Historical Association.

In early December, I finished editing a friend's 300-page novel.

2006

One of my (non-literary) activities at Chama

On March 22, 2006, I flew to San Francisco for the Renaissance Society of America Conference, where I chaired a session on "obscure" sixteenth-century French poets.

The following Friday (March 24), I flew to Tucson for the High Desert Crimes Book Festival.

On Monday (March 27), I worked in the Archive of Ethnohistory at the Arizona State Museum (UAZ) and found documents written by Ignaz Pfefferkorn's contemporaries, between 1756 and 1767. The documentation will be extremely helpful when I start revising Sonora Wind, Ill Wind and I'll Come To Thee…. I now have my rights back for those two novels, and will soon be working on second editions that will include information I have learned since I wrote the books back in 2001 and 2002. I'll be revisiting that archive soon, since holdings are rich!

The Historical Society of New Mexico met from April 21-23, and on that Friday, I presented a learned paper, "History or Mostly Myth? Caveat lector! Discrepancies In Scholarly Accounts of the Chamuscado Expedition, 1581-1582." You can read the paper here. It is a side product of my forthcoming historical novel, The Seven Cities of Mud, about the second expedition up the Rio Grande, forty years after Coronado's. Only nine men, three Franciscan friars and nine soldiers undertook the entrada; the three friars were killed, and the captain died of disease. The remaining soldiers made their report to the Viceroy, the Conde de Coruña, and the scribe, Hernán Gallegos, one of the soldiers, petitioned the king, Felipe II, to be made viceroy of the newly explored territory of New Mexico. He was nominated, but did not live to assume his title.

After a successful and fun weekend in Chama, NM (5.11-14.06) and after the Women's Global Connection Conference in San Antonio (5.18-21), I drove to Georgia, where, in the seclusion and beauty of The Hambidge Center For the Arts and Sciences, I completed The Seven Cities of Mud on June 11. I took the future novel to my editor, Gerald W. Mills, then drove with friend Ralph Freedman to Mt. Desert Island, Maine, for a three-week break. During that time, I worked on revising my first Pfefferkorn mystery, Sonora Wind, Ill Wind.

In July (7.14-16.2006), I attended the ConMisterio Conference for mystery writers in Austin, TX, and participated in two panel discussions. There, I met Katie Hamilton, a fellow mystery writer and fine novelist who also runs the Metheglin Press out of Phoenix, AZ (http://metheglinPress.com). She does reprints of titles like "Snails, Sex and Sermons in 1744, Testaceo Theología [by] Friedrich Christian Lesser, Leipzig, 1744" and "Spells and Incantations of Yesteryear, attributed to Cagliostro." Katie is a native of Cologne, Germany, Ignaz' stamping grounds, and so was extremely helpful in suggesting things to do and see, places to visit, and antiquities Ignaz would have known, etc.

In August, I was informed that my book Apache Lance, Franciscan Cross, had won a literary award. Women Writing the West recognized it as a WILLA [Cather] Literary Finalist. I received the award at the WWW Conference in Colorado Springs in late October.

I spent all of September in Germany, continuing my search for details of the life of Ignaz Pfefferkorn, S.J., the hero of my mystery novel series. I'm planning a fourth mystery set in Germany this time. (See below)

During a mini-book tour from November 6-11, I spoke at the Historical Society in Carlsbad, NM (11.6.06), at three branch libraries (11.8.06 and two talks on 11.11.06) in El Paso, I also spoke about and read from Apache Lance, Franciscan Cross at the Inn at Los Patios in San Antonio on 11.17.06.

TOUR OF 18TH-CENTURY JESUIT MISSIONS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN SONORA STATE, MEXICO

Our tour began on January 3, 2007, from Tucson, Arizona. We met La Ruta de Sonora's tour organizer, Monica Durand, early that afternoon, and treated her and the tour guide, Rene Cordova, to dinner at the Arizona Inn that night. Rene is a graduate student at the U. of AZ right now, but already has a degree in botany from U. of Sonora, and is well versed in history as well. We got underway early the next morning, leaving the Mercedes with friends whom we'd met on the previous Sonora Jesuit Mission tour, a year ago last October. Rene did all the driving, since he was using a company van that was high enough to ford Sonora's rivers.

San Ignacio Mission	Cucurpe Ruins

We entered Sonora through Nogales and saw the return lanes jammed with cars and trucks backed up for a couple of miles. There must have been hundreds of vehicles, whose wait could have been up to four hours. Right then, we decided NOT to return through that port. We saw San Ignacio Mission, had lunch in Magdalena de Kino, and then branched off east to see Cucurpe Mission, the last one served by Ignaz Pfefferkorn before he was arrested and expelled in 1767. Landscape on the way was beautiful, sometimes breathtakingly grandiose. The San Miguel River Valley, where Cucurpe is located, is fertile and peaceful, and I can see how Ignaz would feel more at home there. The ruin with its imposing brick arches is Franciscan, however. Ignaz' church was a 'hall church' built of sun-dried adobe, probably with a mesquite beam ceiling, probably the ruin we see behind the arches. It was closed so we couldn't see inside. A Franciscan describes it as well preserved and well appointed in 1772 when he visited there. After snapping photos of the ruins and the landscape, we backtracked and went down to Hermosillo, where we spent the night.

Cucurpe	Ures Mission

Next day, we toured in Hermosillo and met Dr. Franz Wicker, a German prof. at La Universidad de Sonora, who is an expert in 18th-century Jesuits. We had a rapid, lively conversation in English, Spanish, and German, and I learned a number of things, but I already knew much that he was telling me. He did provide the name of the Procurator of Jesuit Missions in Nuremberg, Father Biedenmann, who he thought might help find Ignaz' third volume (the one recounting his personal experiences that was never published and since lost). We got away from Hermosillo at 3:00 pm, arrived at Ures Mission before sundown, and spent a good deal of time inspecting and touring it. It has been totally rebuilt by the Franciscans and is comparable to San Xavier del Bac near Tucson, but leaves little of the original structure. We then proceeded through the precipitous Sonora River Gorge and on upriver to Banámichi, where we were greeted with a gourmet dinner and delightful conversation with the host and hostess of the Posada del Rio Sonora.

Arroyo Arispe	Arispe	Arispe Interior

The most impressive of the Jesuit mission churches came next day, farther upriver at Arispe, where Carlos Rojas, S.J. served for 14 years and built a magnificent stone church. His name is incised on the facade along with various symbols, including sun and moon, and pillars where saints' statues were once attached. Inside, the lofty ceiling is beamed with carved mesquite (I still can't quite imagine mesquite trees that big), and the retablos in the transepts are both originals, ca. 1720's. I found Rojas' church especially moving. We proceeded from there downriver again, visiting missions on the way, and I heard Vigil Mass in the church in Aconchi, where a larger-than-life crucifix adorns the main retablo, the Corpus carved in obsidian--a coal black Christ. Impressive. We spent Saturday night back at the posada in Banámichi.

Aconchi Black Christ	Ospura

We set out eastward next day to cross the next range of mountains to Oposura (now Moctezuma) that was the R&R mission for exhausted and sick Jesuit missionaries in the 18th century. Ignaz spent some time there between his failed stint in Guevavi (now in Tumacacori National Park in Arizona) and his move to Cucurpe. That, too, was a stunning and very large church, with a black, peaked beam ceiling supported by great black wooden arches. Little of the original furnishings are left, however, except for a gorgeous baroque retablo in the west transept.

Ospura Exterior	Ospura Interior

The final jewel was Cuquiárachi, a small mission on the outer fringe of the Jesuit settlement. Our guide, who up to then knew literally EVERYTHING about the missions, native plants and animals, and native arts and crafts, knew nothing about this mission and had never seen it. We went through Fronteras, now a town and once the presidio protecting Cuquiárachi, and got directions on how to reach the mission. The dirt road seemed to go on forever, when we 'just happened' to find a likely-looking ranch where we stopped to inquire where the mission might be. Two teen-age girls met us and we showed them a picture of the mission as it had appeared in 1948 or so. They immediately ran to call their mother, a handsome youngish woman who was amazed by the picture. "I'll be glad to guide you the rest of the way," she said, "since I'm the 'encargada de las llaves'--the keeper of the keys." We loaded her and the two girls in the van and drove to the mission, now a tiny town. That church is almost unaltered since Jesuit times, although it has been re-floored, re-roofed, and re-painted white outside and in. The adobe walls are three feet or more thick. I was most moved by the simplicity of that little church, re-living the sacrifices and hardships it had witnessed. Outside, two of the houses immediately in front and to the left side of the church, also with three-foot-thick walls and buttresses, were part of the original defensive plaza around the mission precinct--probably, originally, the priest's house and rectory.

Cuquiárachi Exterior	Cuquiárachi Interior

Father Tom Steele, S.J., said his tour of the western missions was "the most moving experience of his life." I suspect that was an exaggeration, but I felt much the same way in many of those churches. The very air vibrates with the hopes, fears, joys, terrors and consolations of those long-ago times when those Jesuit missionaries gave everything they had for the greater glory of God.

Read: Sleuthing for Ignaz

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