A Village Life
By William deBuys and Alex Harris
Book design by Margaret Sartor
University of New Mexico Press, 1990
River of Traps combines words and photographs to tell the story of Jacobo Romero, an oldtime northern New mexico villager who befriends the authors and initiates them into knowledge of land, water, and a way of life long rooted in the mountain valley that became their common home. Critically acclaimed and widely admired, river of Traps has been justifiably called a western Classic. River of Traps, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Evans Biography Award in 1990, is a portrait in words and photographs of all three men and of the place that shaped their lives.
The 1990 edition of River of Traps was awarded First Place, Design and Production Excellence, from the Rocky Mountain Publishers Association.
“Brims with gifts of language and vision…The poetry of the text is matched by Mr. Harris’s photographs, which are emotionally lean and visually rich.” — Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review
