Customer Reviews

Letters from Wupatki

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After a recent visit to the 800 year old Wupatki ruins in Northern Arizona, I was fascinated to find that modern man had actually lived there in the 30's and 40's. This book recounts life at the ruins of the ranger in charge and his new bride. Letters written by Courtney to her family and friends reveal a simple and exciting life in Arizona, while living in two rooms of an actual Sinagua ruin. This book would probably be especially fascinating to those who live in Arizona or visit frequently.

This little book is no page turner, but if you're interested in diary writing or if you're an armchair archaeologist (like myself) you'll get a kick out of it.

The writer of the letters actually spent a number of years living on what is now the Wupatki grounds, just north of Flagstaff, AZ. Wupatki is a great place to visit--it's an amazing scattering of those magical stone dwellings left by some of the original inhabitants of the southwest.

She is a somewhat naive writer...and that is both the charm and the downfall of this little book. You can get a lot through her, that you might be filtered out by a more experienced writer. On the other hand, there is much of the mundane in these letters. This is somewhat mitigated by the situation in which the mundane occurs.

Read it to learn more about the inhabitants of the grounds, read it to learn a bit about our governmental custodianship of the land and read it to learn a little about life during wartimes. Just don't expect Garcia Marquez.

I bought this for my wife during a visit to Wupatki National Monument and she enjoyed it so much I read it as well. It was a fast and fun read. Afterward I found myself planning a return trip to see all the things we had missed and a chance to re-visit the locations mentioned in these letters.

These are actual (lightly edited) letters written by the wife of a former custodian of the monument and covers the period just before, during and just after World War II. At the time they actually lived in, and later beside, the monument itself.

If you love the Flagstaff area of Arizona, or the southwest in general, or are just an armchair adventurer, you'll probably enjoy it just as much.

Also, I beleive this is a "must read" for National Park aficionados.