Guitars and Adobes, and the Uncollected Stories of Fray Angelico Chavez

Fray Angelico Chavez [born Manuel Ezequiel Chavez] (1910-1996) was one of New Mexico's foremost writers and intellectuals, with hundreds of poems, articles, plays, stories, and twenty-four books to his credit. In 1924, at the age of fourteen, he traveled from northern New Mexico to Ohio to study and train in the Franciscan Order, becoming the first native New Mexican to be ordained a Franciscan priest. This rare collection of writings combines Chavez's early fiction with his little-known novelGuitars and Adobes, originally published in 1931-32 in serialized form. The novel presents an alternative Hispano vision to Willa Cather's famedDeath Comes for the Archbishop. In both his writing and his art, this towering man of letters and the arts drew from his Catholic beliefs, his identity as a Hispano, and a rich well of creativity. A member of the Santa Fe writers' group that included luminary figures such as D. H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, Alice Corbin, Mary Austin, and Witter Bynner, Chavez exchanged influence with his contemporaries during the heady times of the Santa Fe writer's era of the '20s and '30s. Ellen McCracken, Chavez's biographer and an authority on his literary legacy, introduces the material with an essay that provides considerable insight into Chavez's creative and spiritual paths. Included in this collection are original lithographs made by noted New Mexico artist Gerald Cassidy and drawings by Chavez to illustrate the stories.