Shipping Estimate
USA
- USA
- CAN
- USA
- CAN
Ships within 48 hours · Estimated delivery Jul 14 - Jul 19
Promo Codes Available:
For Your Every Summer RSVP, with Code: SUMMER15
Description
Where They Bury You (Softcover)In August 1863, during Kit Carson's roundup of the Navajo, Santa Fe's Provost Marshal, Major Joseph Cummings, is found dead in an arroyo near what is now the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado, Arizona. The murder, as well as the roughly million of today's dollars in cash and belongings in his saddlebags, is historically factual. Carson's explanation that he was shot by a lone Indian, which, even today, can be found in the U. S. Army Archives, is
In August 1863, during Kit Carson's roundup of the Navajo, Santa Fe's Provost Marshal, Major Joseph Cummings, is found dead in an arroyo near what is now the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado, Arizona. The murder, as well as the roughly million of today's dollars in cash and belongings in his saddlebags, is historically factual. Carson's explanation that he was shot by a lone Indian, which, even today, can be found in the U.S. Army Archives, is implausible. Who did kill Carson's "brave and lamented" Major? The answer is revealed in this tale of a group of con artists operating in 1861-1863 in the New Mexico and Arizona Territories. As a matter of historical fact, millions of today's dollars were embezzled from the Army, the Church, and the New Mexico Territory during this time. In this fictionalized version, the group includes the aide de camp of the Territories' Commanding General of the Union Army, a poker dealer with a checkered past in love with one of her co-conspirators, and the Provost Marshal of Santa Fe. It is an epic tale of murder and mystery, of staggering thefts, of love and deceit. Both a Western and a Civil War novel, this murder mystery occurs in and among Cochise's Chiricahua Apache Wars, the Navajo depredations and wars, Indian Agent Kit Carson's return to action from retirement, and the Civil War. The story follows the con artists, some historical, some fictional, during their poker games, scams, love affairs, and bank robberies, right into that arroyo deep in the heart of Navajo country. STEVEN W. KOHLHAGEN is a former economics professor (University of California at Berkeley) and Wall Street investment banker. He is the author of innumerable economics publications, and he and his wife, Gale, jointly published a murder mystery, "Tiger Found." He divides his time between the New Mexico-Colorado border high in the San Juan Mountains and Charleston, South Carolina.Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Sunstone Press
Published: 09/01/2013
ISBN: 9780865349360
Pages: 346
Weight: 1.12lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.77d
Review Citations: Foreword 07/26/2013
Booklist 09/15/2013 pg. 41
Shipping Notes
- Free Standard Shipping on $100+ Orders to the USA.
- Except Preorder products are shipped in 48 hours.
- Delivery to the USA:
- Standard Shipping : 3-10 business days
- If time is of the essence, please consider selecting expedited delivery for faster service.
Exchange/Return Notes
- We offer a 30-day return/exchange service after receiving.
- Final sale items are not eligible for returns or exchanges.
- To process your return/exchange, please contact us at [email protected]
- Please click here for more details>>> Return & Exchange Policy
4.9 ★★★★★
Based on 917 reviews
Sort
Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
Exquisite, enrapturing
Format: Paperback
Loved the gritty, visceral language and the epic nature of this poem. Notely blows me away -- the loss of memory, the tangled and eternal subway, the owls and masks.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2014
★★★★★ 5
Five Stars
Format: Paperback
Brilliant, lucid, engaging and brave, a feminist chthonic journey shimmering with poetic bravado.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2014
★★★★★ 5
A Feminist Divine Comedy?
Format: Paperback
Let me start with this: The Descent of Alette is difficult to read at first. Notley "puts quotation marks around" "groups of words" "in lines" "that can be off-putting." Note that I'm not quoting from the book there, just giving an example of what the book's text appears like. This forces us to read more slowly, taking in each line a few words at a time. What appears to be awkward is in fact a great solution to the speed-reading most of us do these days. That being said, it's troublesome for the first few poems, less so after that, virtually invisible by the end of the first section.
When talking about this book, I immediately compare it to Dante's Divine Comedy, and I commonly see others do the same (see an earlier review here on Amazon.com). Exchange Hell for a subway, and you've basically got it: an underground realm ruled over by a Tyrant, poor souls being tortured, though in this case there is no indication that they have done anything to deserve it. Notley's language might not be quite as beautiful/harsh as Dante's, but her images stand with anything he created. After introducing two characters on a subway, a woman and her baby, both on fire, Notley writes:
"another woman" "in uniform" "from above ground"
"entered" "the train" "She was fireproof" "she wore gloves, & she"
"took" "the baby" "took the baby" "away from the"
"mother" "Extracted" "the burning baby" "From the fire" "they
made together" "But the baby" "still burned"
("But not yours" "It didn't happen" "to you")
"We don't know yet" "if it will" "stop burning,"
"said the uniformed" "woman" "The burning woman" "was crying"
"she made a form" "in her mind" "an imaginary" "form" "to
settle" "in her arms where" "the baby" "had been" "We saw
her fiery arms" "cradle the air" "She cradled air" ("They take your
children" "away" "if you"re on fire")
"In the air that" "she cradled" "it seemed to us there" "floated"
"a flower-like" "a red flower" "its petals" "curling flames"
"She cradled" "seemed to cradle" "the burning flower of" "herself gone"
"her life" ("She saw" "whatever she saw, but what we saw" "was that flower")
After surviving the horrors of the subway, Alette goes even deeper underground, passing through a series of psychological challenges that at times seem straight out of Freud, at times out of Classical mythology, at times out of collective dreams. Throughout it all, we learn more and more about Alette, who is not just a "hero" who goes through the motions necessary to the plot, but who considers and stumbles and is confused and learns.
The third section of the book is a rebirth, wherein Alette finds a source for a stronger power than the Tyrant's, and it is distinctly feminist in its nature. I need to note here for those who react to feminism in a knee-jerk way: Notley's feminism is not a militant feminism, though it requires brief "military" action on Alette's part. Men are helpful in the story, have purpose besides being the bad guy. If anything, what Notley attacks in the form of the Tyrant is the idea of a corrupt masculinity, a kind of Big Brother who would easily stand as an antagonist in any number of 20th/21st century literary works. Alette's feminism is the discovery of her place in the world, and that place is not slaving away mindlessly for the Tyrant, not acting as just a womb or pair of hands or pretty face. It's a nuanced message, despite the epic (and therefore presumably black-and-white) nature of the whole book.
The fourth section is the showdown with the Tyrant, a great deal of philosophizing, and an ending that I actually find more satisfying than that of Paradiso. I won't spoil it here, but it just works extremely well in conjunction with the themes of Descent as a whole.
If you want to be challenged, if you want to think deep thoughts, if you want surreality and magic, pick up The Descent of Alette. For even more interesting reading from the author and her partner, you could also turn to The Scarlet Cabinet, which contains but actually predates the on-its-own publication of Descent.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2010
★★★★★ 5
A Contemporary Epic
Format: Paperback
I have a complicated relationship with most of the books I've read by Alice Notley. I admire her facility with the lyric, her ability to get just beneath a concept or sentiment using a very talk-y style so that I always feel like I'm with whatever speaker she's using, inside that mind and her mind all at once. This is a good kind of complication. It's one I yearn for with poems.
The unpleasant complications are when I feel as though I'm just being subjected to her unedited notebook entries. Too much, too much, too much. It comes up especially with her book Mysteries of Small Houses.
I mention these difficulties only to sharpen the accomplishment of The Descent of Alette. Like other reviewers, I feel the tonal similarities to Dante's Inferno. Which becomes a subversive allusion considering Alette seeks after a male Tyrant in order to destroy him, while Dante sought after his Beatrice out of desire. But I read and reread Alette, because Notley continually subverts patriarchal conventions in the book.
I actually find I crave the speaker's intellect, and the mythic logic that gives the book its arc. I want it more. Yes, there are quotations around each fragment in the poems. I actually appreciate them for slowing my reading down, and for sharpening my focus on the use of Notley's language. And it's not just a stylistic tic, or something to be endured. It could actually be described as further subversion of The Tyrant Alette pursues.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2011
★★★★★ 2
Imagery and diction
Format: Paperback
This book was very challenging to read because everything was written in quotations however, it was intriguing as a different way of writing poetry.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2020