Author Stephen Strom is also a professional photographer, and his book "Forging" includes 153 color images focusing on large landscape conservation in Arizona and New Mexico. Strom details efforts to craft the Pima County’s Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, establish Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, protect Cienega Ranch, and create the Malpai Borderlands Group. 

See beautiful images from Tucson’s backyard, and learn what it takes to maintain this natural beauty and preserve working landscapes.

“Forging” shows how diverse groups of citizens have collaborated to develop visions for land use that harmonized sometimes conflicting ecological, economic, cultural, and community needs. Through the voices of more than 70 individuals involved in these efforts, we learn how they've developed plans for protecting, restoring, and stewarding lands sustainably; the management and funding tools they’ve used; and their perceptions of the challenges that remain and how to meet them.

Planning a visit to Patagonia, Arizona, on the last weekend in October? Strom will discuss his book and answer questions at this free presentation sponsored by Friends of Sonoita Creek, an organization featured in the book. You can meet him and see his images on the big screen at the Patagonia Public Library.

“Kidnapped" recounts the near-death experience of the author's grandfather, Antonyo Mekel Lawuxh (Antonio Esteban). Esteban fell gravely ill in Guatemala in the late 1920s but survived to tell his family and community what he had witnessed of the afterlife. Infused with memory, the author illustrates Guatemala's unique religious syncretism, exploring conceptions of heaven and hell shared between Catholicism and Indigenous Maya spirituality. In the tradition of both the Popol Vuh and the Divine Comedy, Montejo’s narrative challenges easy categorization—this is a work of family history, religious testimony, political allegory, and sacred literature.

The first English-language collection of Latina/x caregiving testimonios gives voice to diverse caregiving experiences. "Testimonios" brings together 13 first-person accounts revealing the tragic flaws in our health-care system and the woefully undervalued labor of providing care to family and community. Contributors discuss kinship care, including formal and informal adoptions, community care, caregiving in professional health contexts, and the implicit caregiving inherent in teaching BIPOC students, which largely falls upon faculty of color.

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