When it came to prisoners, Charles Bowden took none. Fools? He suffered none. And as for quarter or fu… well, none of either were given. Bold, sometimes brash, fiercely loyal, a blood enemy or the cruel and the greedy, with a heart as big as the wide open spaces of the American southwest that he came to call home and a mind with the seemingly limitless capacity to instantly recall a bewildering assortment of fact and figures, he was truly an original.
Although I came to his writing rather late through his blood-chilling non-fiction exposé Murder City; Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields, I have since worked my way through complete body of works and found in them a remarkable amount of deep ecology and breath-takingly perceptive (as well as at times also stream-of-consciousness, said consciousness likely sometimes “enhanced”) reflections on the natural world.
Which is why I was thrilled to discover the package from University of Arizona Press sitting on my desk that contained copies of their new editions of two of his best-known early works: Blue Desert, with a new forward by Francisco Cantú, and Frog Mountain Blues with its original photos by Jack Dykinga and a new forward by Alison Hawthorne Deming.
The official publication date for both these volumes is 2 October 2018, so it might be a good idea either to begin watching for them on the shelves of your local book shop very soon or to beat the rush and simply get your order placed for them now.
