By Sue Snively

 The Asian Palate
328 E. Main St., Buena Vista, CO
719-395-6679

Hours: Lunch – Mon, Wed – Sat: 11am-2pm

Dinner – Mon, Wed – Sunday: 5pm-9pm

For a small town with many eateries, it doesn’t take long in Buena Vista to find a type of food that will satisfy your tastes on any particular evening. We don’t eat out very much, so when we do so we like it to be special and different; thus we found ourselves bypassing a variety of standard American dining places and a few others with international influences, and chose to dine at the Asian Palate.

Eddie Sandoval opened the restaurant in July of 2009. He chose Buena Vista because of his familiarity with and love of the town. He surveyed a fair number of residents to learn what kind of restaurant might do well, and came up with Asian cuisine based upon the number of requests for sushi on the menu. Eddie is a first-generation Filipino who grew up eating Asian food, and decided a restaurant with a wide variety of authentic foods from many Asian countries would be a good bet. He is an expert on Asian cooking and personally trains his chefs. Read the rest of this article

La Sociedad: Guardians of Hispanic Culture Along the Rio Grande
By José A. Rivera
University of New Mexico Press, 2010
ISBN 978-0 8263-4894-4
Photographs by Daniel Salazar et al.

Reviewed by Virginia McConnell Simmons

In 1900, led by Celedonia Mondragón of Antonito, his Hispanic neighbors organized the Sociedad Protección Mútua de Trabajadores Unidos, which soon had 65 chapters called concilios throughout rural southern Colorado, northern New Mexico, and a few places in Utah. These buildings once bore, or still bear in many cases, the fading initials SPMDTU for brevity’s sake, as the facades often tended to be small. Read the rest of this article

by Suzy Patterson

Barry’s Den Café
27077 US Hwy. 50
Texas Creek, CO
(719) 275-3275

Need a great excuse to visit Texas Creek, Colorado?

Two words: “Barry’s Den.”

This unassuming little roadside café pretty much is Texas Creek. You’ll find it about midway between Salida and Cañon City on U.S. 50 at the junction of Hwy. 69. There’s not much else there except a couple of defunct gas pumps, a rafting and ATV tour operation, a herd of bighorn sheep hangin’ around and the Arkansas River flowing by. But the Barry family’s signature “Howlin’ Good Cookin’” definitely has put Texas Creek on the map. Read the rest of this article

Breaking into the Backcountry

By Steven Edwards

University of Nebraska Press, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8032-2653-1
$16.95, 179pp.

Reviewed by Eduardo Rey Brummel

Just last week I had a brief conversation with a friend regarding the lack of male rites of passage these days. Breaking into the Backcountry is about things explicit and implicit. One of those things is Steve Edwards’ rite of passage.

He writes, “The call came from John Daniel, the contest’s coordinator: I had somehow managed to win the PEN/Northwest Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, whose prize was a small cash stipend and seven months as caretaker of a backcountry homestead in what John called ‘unparalleled solitude’ along the federally designated Wild and Scenic Rogue River in southwestern Oregon.” Read the rest of this article

by Patty LaTaille

Saguache is boasting a new restaurant in town, with rave reviews from the locals. “It’s a comfortable little diner with good pies,” remarked Valley resident and good friend Chuck Tidd. “You can just hang out; your food will be along when it gets there …”

Walking into the dim, yet cheerful interior, we marveled at the original fir floor, blue-stained beetle-kill pine ceiling, and the age of the building – built in 1888 as the original bar and saloon known as the “Stockman’s Club.” Big wooden tables and a large cozy booth up front, along with a glassed-in bakery case to display all the homemade goodies, made up the rest of the main décor. Read the rest of this article

Alfonso’s Real Mexican Food
2801 East Main Street
Canon City, CO 81212
(719) 276-0186

Driving through Cañon City on U.S. Hwy 50 it is easy to miss one of the best taquerías in Central Colorado. That’s because it is located inside a Conoco mini-mart off a frontage road on the southeast side of town and takes a bit of searching to locate if you don’t know your way around.

We call it a taquería, but it is much more than that. The menu is vast and the food is prepared quickly. If you are looking for fish tacos, shrimp burritos, mulita, carne asada fries or a chimichanga to take with you on the road or enjoy in the dining room/ mini- mart, you definitely want to give them a try. Read the rest of this article

The Book of John, By Kate Niles

O-Books, paperback, 225 pages
ISBN-10: 1846942918
ISBN-13: 978-1846942914

Reviewed by Annie Dawid

Surely we are all autistic at some level, in some place in our hearts? Living in this country, with its glamour and malls, its stream of cars, its TV and competition, is like battering yourself against a sea wall, time and again. How do you not retreat into a world of your own in the face of that?

John Gregory Wayne Thompson, eponymous hero of Kate Niles’s second novel, ponders thus in the first chapter of this exquisitely-rendered journey of one man’s soul, from the deserts of Southwest Colorado to the cold beaches of Neah Bay in the Pacific Northwest, tracking his life and loves like an archeologist mapping our collective history. Read the rest of this article

The Cliff Dwellings Speak: Exploring the Ancient Ruins of the Greater American Southwest
By Beth and Bill Sagstetter
BenchMark Publishing of Colorado LLC, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9645824-2-2
$24.95, 314pp, plus appendices, glossary, bibliography, and index

Reviewed by Eduardo Rey Brummel

Winter is over, days are longer, kids are out of school, and ‘tis the season for getting outside, tanning your hide, skinning knees and scraping elbows. For those planning to visit Mesa Verde and/or other cliff dwellings, you’re in luck. Beth and Bill Sagstetter have just completed this follow-up to The Mining Camps Speak, which is also destined to become both essential and popular. Read the rest of this article

Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company: 1914-1942
By Jonathan H. Rees
Published in 2010 by University of Colorado Press
ISBN 978-0-87081-964-3
344 pages, paperback, $34.95

Reviewed by Virginia McConnell Simmons

The Ludlow Massacre near Trinidad was attracting national outrage in 1914. Leading up to it, labor unrest was widespread, and violent incidents had been escalating, not only at Ludlow but in the coalfields of the whole region. With mine owners pitted against union organizations throughout Colorado in the early 1900s, as well as throughout the nation for decades, public sympathies came down on the side of the workers after Ludlow, with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the largest single stockholder and member of the board of directors of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), becoming a special target of public anger. Read the rest of this article

Halfway to Heaven
By Mark Obmascik

Published in 2009 by Free Press,
a division of Simon and Schuster
ISBN13: 978-1-4165-6699-1

Reviewed by Martha Quillen

Halfway to Heaven is an adventure travelogue featuring harrowing tales of derring-do and death, along with passages about Colorado history, Colorado places (including Leadville and Salida), Colorado fourteeners, and mountain climbers; all held together with stand-up style comedy.

For me, this combination was not an immediate success. At first, I thought Obmascik’s jokes about marriage, aging, baldness, and parenthood blended with his profile on William Henry Jackson about as well as ice cream and lemonade blend to make a sundae.

Read the rest of this article

Text and Captions by Ed Rains
2009 – Turner Publishing Company
ISBN:978-1-59652-535-1

Reviewed by Mike Rosso

Having spent several years as a photo restorist in Durango, working with museums in Durango, Cortez, Dolores and Silverton, I was eager to obtain a copy of Historic Photos of Colorado Mining when it was offered for review.

Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0870819461[/amazon-product]By James E. Fell, Jr.
Published in 2009 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 978-0-87081-946-9

Reviewed by Virginia McConnell Simmons

Like most readers in Colorado, I have countless books and booklets about the holes in the ground where miners struck it rich or suffered disappointment, but until I read this book, I never knew much about the rusty smelter ruins and grimy slag heaps that remain near those mines. The no-nonsense tome Ores to Metals became a lodestone for me this summer, attracting me to read every page and learn the things about the smelter ruins and slag heaps that have been ignored in the more popular dramas and melodramas about mining. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0979625513[/amazon-product]By Carol Darnell Guerrero-Murphy
Published in 2007 by Ghost Road Press
ISBN 0-9796255-1-3

Reviewed by Elliot Jackson

Why, oh why, wonders the Inconstant Reader, do I routinely pass by poetry in my restless forays through my library’s shelves? Is it because I had a rigorous education in my youth, and read so much of it that I just OD’d? Or do I just forget about it? Maybe it’s simple intimidation: a good poem is such a richly-stuffed little nugget that getting through a whole book of poetry feels like downing a plate of baklava all by myself (maybe that’s why, when I do get around to reading poetry, that I love to read it aloud, or hear it read: just like that plate of baklava, a poem seems created to be shared – munched by multiple ears). Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1416579060[/amazon-product]by Lisa Jones
Scribner, May 2009
Hardcover, 288 pages
ISBN-10: 1416579060

Essay/Review by Elliot Jackson

“What does it matter if it hurts like hell, so long as it makes a good book?” – Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

Colorado writer Lisa Jones has just finished her first book, Broken. The title is a play on words – it refers to horse breaking, hearts breaking, bodies breaking. She has subtitled it, “a love story”, and so it is – in the way that, say, the New Testament is a love story. Bear with me, here, a moment – I mean no disrespect, and certainly no blasphemy. But imagine the gospel of – let’s call her Theodora: a well-educated Greco-Roman woman who, having heard tell of a healer and holy man working in the provinces of the Empire, makes the decision to leave Rome and travel to Jerusalem to write about him. She has heard tales of miracles which she accepts skeptically but politely: she doesn’t need to believe in miracles, or this Hebrew God, to write about them – or so she thinks. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1590580729[/amazon-product]By Ann Parker
2003, 2006, 2009 Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN 1-59058-072-9

Reviewed by Nancy Hudelson

Ann Parker’s Silver Rush historical mystery series, published by Poisoned Pen Press, is set in the silver boomtown of Leadville in the 1880s. The series is rich with tales of greed, lust and deception when men and women stopped at nothing, not even murder, to strike it rich. There can be no doubt that the rush mining era in the 1880s in the Colorado Rockies was one of the most exciting chapters in the history of the American West. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0292719175[/amazon-product]

By: Susan J. Tweit
Illustrations by: Sherrie York
University of Texas Press, March 2009
ISBN: 978-0-0292-71917-0

Reviewed by Eduardo Rey Brummel

Susan Tweit has been a fixture of Salida for over a decade. Her weekly column in Salida’s Mountain Mail, has been a fixture for nearly as long, and she’s graced the pages of Colorado Central, bunches of times. Now, after writing eleven place-based books, Tweit’s most recent book, Walking Nature Home, is her most intimate, and has the most to say about the place we call “home.” Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0870819348[/amazon-product]

By F. Darrell Munsell
Published in 2008 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 978-0-87081-934-6

Reviewed by Virginia McConnell Simmons

With its inclusion of Ludlow, the scene of southern Colorado’s most deadly labor fight, From Redstone to Ludlow will hardly be mistaken for a tourist’s guide to Pitkin County’s tiny village of Redstone on the Crystal River. Rather, as the subtitle indicates, the text is a hefty study in Colorado labor history, specifically relating to coal mining. But who is the subtitle’s John Cleveland Osgood, a name that seldom appears in Colorado histories, except in advertisements that might lure travelers to Redstone? As author F. Darrell Munsell shows, he was the stubborn, aggressive leader of mining men in Colorado’s coal and coking industries at the turn of the last century. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0826346103[/amazon-product]

By Jan MacKell
Foreword by Thomas J. Noel
Published in 2009 by University Press of New Mexico
ISBN 978-0-8263-4610-0

Reviewed by Virginia McConnell Simmons

As Frank Gifford once said about the sport of pro football, “There are no winners, only survivors.” As this new book by Jan MacKell shows, there were few winners and survivors in the sport of prostitution, but Central Colorado can claim a couple of well-known survivors, like Cockeyed Liz Spurgeon (or Spurgen) in Buena Vista and Laura Evans (or Evens) in Salida, who managed to survive for many years. Perhaps their survival was helped by the healthful climate. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1592982506[/amazon-product]By Mike Sherack
Beaver’s Pond Press: September 2008
ISBN: 1592982506

At the start of deer season in Idaho, someone begins hunting the hunters. The FBI takes over the case after the killer runs a classified ad in the Idaho Statesman, warning that the slayings will continue until officials end the hunting season. The FBI’s top agent in such matters, Max Miller, is dispatched to Boise. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0060852569[/amazon-product]
by Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver
Illustrated by Richard A. Houser.
Harper Collins, 2007
ISBN: 0060852569

I found so much to appreciate in this book – a sprawling meditation on food, food politics, family, origns, and what we sometimes self-consciously refer to as The American Way of Life – that it is a bit of a challenge for me to know where to begin. So, let’s begin with: why this book? Why now? It came out in 2007, for heaven’s sake – two years ago being a sliver of eternity in America. 2007 – remember when? Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1439223033[/amazon-product]And Darkness Was Under His Feet: Stories Of A Family
By Annie Dawid
Published in 2008 by The Litchfield Review Press.
ISBN: 978-1-60702-342-5 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0446698660[/amazon-product]Review by Allen Best

Transportation – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future
by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran
Published in 2007 by Hachette Book Group
ISBN: 978-0446698665 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1594160708[/amazon-product]Review by Forrest Whitman

History – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Death of a Gunfighter – The Quest for Jack Slade, the West’s Most Elusive Legend
by Dan Rottenberg
Published in 2008 by Westholm
ISBN 978-1-59416-070-7 Read the rest of this article

Review by Lynda La Rocca

Books – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

I HAVE TO ADMIT that I had a little trouble selecting some “favorites” for this column because, frankly, I didn’t read a lot of books in 2008 that were “new” to me in the sense of never having read them before. Instead, I had concentrated on rereading old favorites, many of which I’ve recommended previously in the pages of Colorado Central. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0870819380[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

History – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

A Tenderfoot in Colorado
by Richard Baxter Townshend
First published in 1923
Published in 2008 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 978-0-87081-938-4 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1583852743[/amazon-product]Review by Forrest Whitman

History – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Mountain Mafia – Organized Crime in the Rockies
by Betty L. Alt and Sandra K. Wells
Published in 2008 by Cold Tree Press
ISBN 13: 978-1-58385-274-3 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0865410895[/amazon-product]Review by Martha Quillen

Fiction – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Hard Face Moon
by Nancy Oswald
Published in 2008 by Filter Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-86541-089-3 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1565795660[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Colorado – December 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Colorado 1870-2000 II – Historical photography by William Henry Jackson Contemporary rephotography by John Fielder
Text by Gillian Klucas
Published in 2005 by Westcliffe Publishers in conjunction with the Colorado Historical Society
ISBN 978-1-56579-566-2 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1595544569[/amazon-product]Review by Martha Quillen

Fiction – December 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Together – A Novel of Shared Vision
by Tom Sullivan with Betty White
Published in 2008 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
ISBN: 1595544569 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1932738738[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Biography – December 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Speck – The Life and Times of Spencer Penrose
by Robert C. Olson
Published in 2008 by Western Reflections
ISBN 978-1-932738-50-6 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0826343562[/amazon-product]Review by Virginia McConnell Simmons

Mining – November 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

The Mining Law of 1872: Past, Politics, and Prospects
by Gordon Morris Bakken
Published in 2008 by University of New Mexico Press
ISBN 978-0-8363-4356-7 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0881507873[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Tourism – November 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Backroads & Byways of Colorado Drives, Day Trips & Weekend Excursions
by John Daters & Drea Knufken
Published in 2008 by the Countryman Press
ISBN 978-0-88150-787-4 Read the rest of this article

Review by Jeff Lee

The West – October 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

A Western Primer for the Next Administration, in which, the Rocky Mountain Land Library asks some of the West’s most insightful writers: What Western books would you urge on the next inhabitants of the White House? What do they need to know about our region, and where can they find that information, inspiration, and guidance? Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0976052571[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Outdoors – October 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Hiking Colorado’s Roadless Trails
by Penelope Purdy
Published in 2008
by the Colorado Mountain Club Press
ISBN 978-0-97605250-79 Read the rest of this article

Review by Robert Adams

Colorado – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

The New West – Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range
Written and photographed by Robert Adams with a foreword by John Szarkowski
Originally published in 1974 by Colorado Associated University Press
Reissued as a facsimile using original prints by the Aperture Foundation in 2008 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1560374128[/amazon-product]Review by Martha Quillen

Wildlife – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Born Wild in Colorado
By Wendy Shattil and Bob Rozinski
Published in 2007 by Far Country Press
ISBN 1-56037-412-8 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0816525919[/amazon-product]Review by Chas Clifton

Snakebite – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Zero at the Bone – Rewriting Life after a Snakebite
by Erec Toso
Published in 2007 by University of Arizona Press
ISBN 0-8165-2591-9 Read the rest of this article

Review by Ed Quillen

Ranching – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

The Ranching Way of Life – San Luis Valley, Colorado
DVD released in 2008
by Saguache County Sustainable Environment and Economic Development (ScSEED)
P.O. Box 393, Moffat CO 81143
www.scseed.org
ISBN: None Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0976921855[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Mountains – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Colorado’s San Juan Mountains with historic photos by Joseph Collier
by Grant Collier
Published in 2008 by Collier Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9768218-5-1 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0981658407[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Mountain Life – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

The Monkey Wrench Dad: Dispatches from the backyard frontline
by Ken Wright
Published in 2008 by Raven’s Eye Press
ISBN 978-0-9816534-0-7 Read the rest of this article

Review by Ed Quillen

Forest History – July 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Arthur Carhart, Wilderness Prophet
by Tom Wolf
Published in 2008 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 0-87981-913-5 Read the rest of this article

Review by Eduardo Rey Brummel

Rural Life – July 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Coyotes Always Howl at Night: Tales of a 70s rancher’s wife.
Audrey Keen-Hansen
Trafford Publishing, 2006
ISBN: 1-4251-0748-6 Read the rest of this article

Review by Ed Quillen

Local Guides – July 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Mellow Mountain Trails – 27 Fun Day Hikes in Salida & Buena Vista
by Suzanne Ward and Nathan Ward
Published in 2008 by Ice Mountain Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9748814-3-0 Read the rest of this article

Review by Ed Quillen

Agriculture – June 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Melancholy Green Giants
by J.C. Mattingly
Published in 2007 by Mirage Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9710430-3-9 Read the rest of this article

Review by Eduardo Rey Brummel

Rural Life – June 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Trespass: Living at the edge of the promised land.
By Amy Irvine.
Published in 2008, by North Point Press
ISBN: 978-0-86547-703-2 Read the rest of this article