The Storyteller’s Southwest

In the nation’s lower left corner, a “literary” landscape awaits. Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Max Evans, Tony Hillerman—they’re our “tour guides,” and their haunts are our points of inter-est . . . Pitch your sougans in the wagon, friend, and climb aboard as we hit the literary trail across New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
By Johnny D. Boggs

I’m Alone on a windswept patch of Northern New Mexico, searching for Max Evans’ inspiration. Somewhere, Big Boy’s buried here. Like all of this country, the Des Moines Cemetery looks like something straight out of a Max Evans novel. It should be. Ol’ Max, the fabled icon of New Mexico’s post-World War II literary scene, named this country.

The Hi Lo Country, his 1961 novel that became a pretty good movie in 1998, drew its name from the geography of mesas, arroyos, mountains, and valleys—and a popular game of poker played in some nearby roadhouse. Parts of Des Moines, Cimarron, and Springer were combined to create the fictional town of Hi Lo, N.M. There he is. Wiley “Big Boy” Hittson’s grave rests alongside his mother’s.

Big Boy was Evans’ best pal, and when he was shot to death by his brother, Evans eventually turned the story into an autobiographical novel that would eventually begin a love-hate relationship with director Sam Peckinpah. The land inspires writers of the Southwest. I suspect it always has, and always will.

You might say the same for other areas, be it Texas (Elmer Kelton, Larry McMurtry), Nebraska (Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz), Wyoming (Owen Wister, John D. Nesbitt), Montana (Dorothy M. Johnson, A.B. Guthrie, Jr.) or Alaska (Jack London, Rex Beech), but I’m focusing on the Southwest, finding the stamping grounds of writers from Edward Abbey to Zane Grey. Join me in this literary journey, if you will, across New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California.

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