With this excellent book, historian David Wallace Adams invites us to join him on a journey to the “three roads”—one Navajo, one Hispanic, and one Anglo—that lead to the story of the small town of Magdalena in west-central New Mexico. Readers should accept his offer, for Adams proves to be an industrious, incisive, eloquent, and—of greatest importance—compassionate guide.
Indeed, in his rich, nuanced, and vivid descriptions of this place and its people—in particular, its young people—Adams succeeds in making us feel less like a mere visitor to this community, and, at times, almost as though we are a part of it. We are there, for example, as Cadelaria García helps Hispanic children study for their First Communions, teaching them that “some people do not have the capacity that you have . . . so help ’em” (311). And we cheer the 1968 high school basketball team as its culturally diverse...
