Customer Reviews

Winter in Taos

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This book, Winter in Taos, along with its counterpart, Edge of Taos Desert are treasures in my library. I never lend them out and they have a special place in my home where I keep my favorate books. I first learned of Mabel many, many years ago through my mother, who was a niece, or great-niece of Antonio Lujan, Mabel's last husband. She told me that Mabel was an author and wrote of Taos and many people of the area, including people she knew or was related to. As an adult, I discovered these books in a library and later purchased them through Amazon to learn more about this intriguing woman. Regretfully, I never knew her, although my mother did. This is the type of book that makes you want to make a cup of hot tea, curl up on a cold winter afternoon and immerse yourself in her storytelling; and since I know the areas about which she writes, I also try to visualize what it must have been like during the 1920's, when she walked the paths and trails, before Taos became widely known to the outside world. Whenever I'm in Taos, I visit her grave and say my silent hellos, and wish again that I could have known her.

There were two books I was delighted to come across this month. One was Winter in Taos - over 200 pages of absorbing essay, sprinkled with a dozen or so full-page b & w photos of the Mabel Dodge Luhan house and its environs. First published in 1935, when the writer, Mabel Dodge Luhan was 56, Winter in Taos is an elegant study of passing the seasons hour by hour in a landscape unequaled by the most beautifully wrought architecture of any city in the world. A good deal occurs, but in timeworn (inimitable) New Mexican fashion. The cycles of the seasons may not vary a good deal from decade to decade, but the details of daily life are nuanced and divergent. Ms. Luhan is a bit self-absorbed and uber-contemplative (not unlike her neighbor D.H. Lawrence, or contemporary F. Scott Fitzgerald), but she realizes it, indulges it (for a second or two) and moves on (almost immediately).

If you love Taos then this book is for you! It's a great read, and takes you back to the history of the artists and writers of the 1920's-1950's.