Presidio, Texas is hard country and hardship duty for U.S. Border Patrol officer Dolph Martinez. When circling buzzards lead him to a corpse in Red Wing boots with a .22 bullet hole in an expensive haircut, Dolph realizes this is no ordinary norteño trying to cross the deserted border from Mexico. Is the dead man connected to Sister Quinn's efforts to help Central American political refugees find sanctuary? Is Sister Quinn, a nun who practices curanderismo, mixed up in a smuggling operation? On the border--El Camino del Rio--men and women on both sides of the river and both sides of the law think they know each other's business, but nothing is what it seems. And it is Dolph's job and his destiny to unravel the mystery. This gritty, atmospheric story, the first novel to win the Frank Waters Southwest Writing Contest, has the harsh power and heat of the Texas desert. 
"A richly imagined and terrifically realized novel. Complex and humane, always surprising, it rings as true as the winter light across the southern desert."--James Crumley
"Mr. Sanderson is especially good at contrasting the clarity and austere natural beauty of the Chihuahuan desert with the murky, Orson Welles aura that envelops human society there."--Tom Pilkington, Dallas Morning News 
"[A] lean and lyrical first novel."--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book 
"Makes the gritty, thankless landscape of the border come alive, from the relentless heat to the failed hopes."--Paul Skenazy, Washington Post Book World

El Camino del Rio

Literature & Fiction

Sanderson, Jim

United States

University of New Mexico Press

Presidio, Texas is hard country and hardship duty for U.S. Border Patrol officer Dolph Martinez. When circling buzzards lead him to a corpse in Red Wing boots with a .22 bullet hole in an expensive haircut, Dolph realizes this is no ordinary norteï¿½o trying to cross the deserted border from Mexico. Is the dead man connected to Sister Quinnï¿½s efforts to help Central American political refugees find sanctuary? Is Sister Quinn, a nun who practices curanderismo, mixed up in a smuggling operation? On the borderï¿½El Camino del Rioï¿½men and women on both sides of the river and both sides of the law think they know each otherï¿½s business, but nothing is what it seems. And it is Dolphï¿½s job and his destiny to unravel the mystery. This gritty, atmospheric story, the first novel to win the Frank Waters Southwest Writing Contest, has the harsh power and heat of the Texas desert.
ï¿½A richly imagined and terrifically realized novel. Complex and humane, always surprising, it rings as true as the winter light across the southern desert.ï¿½ï¿½James Crumley
ï¿½Mr. Sanderson is especially good at contrasting the clarity and austere natural beauty of the Chihuahuan desert with the murky, Orson Welles aura that envelops human society there.ï¿½ï¿½Tom Pilkington, Dallas Morning News 
ï¿½[A] lean and lyrical first novel.ï¿½ï¿½Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book
ï¿½Makes the gritty, thankless landscape of the border come alive, from the relentless heat to the failed hopes.ï¿½ï¿½Paul Skenazy, Washington Post Book World

Jerri Johnson used to think she wanted to teach, but she works instead for Samï¿½s Investigating Services in downtown San Antonio. Tracking down bail jumpers and serving subpoenas isnï¿½t a romantic way to make a living, but San Antonio, even in the sweaty summer, is a city of ghosts. Jerri is haunted by memories of a love affair with Vincent Fuentes, a Mexican intellectual who has returned to San Antonio and is trying to enlist her in a radical plot involving running guns across the border. Her friend Joe Parr, an aging Texas Ranger, is visited at night by the ghost of his wife, but by day he keeps an eye on Jerri, Vincent Fuentes, and Vincentï¿½s father, Palo, a retired gangster who is now a solid citizen of San Antonioï¿½s West Side. From the cityï¿½s shady riverbanks and dark bars to the backyards of the well-to-do, there is tragedy in the way this atmospheric story plays itself out. But above all there is the ambiguity of a world where moral distinctions are as fuzzy as the humid air of San Antonio, a world where no one is young enough to draw fine distinctions between right and wrong. 
ï¿½Safe Delivery is a wonderful and unique mixture of a smart crime novel, a classy love story, and a hard vision of the Southwest. I loved it from beginning to end.ï¿½ï¿½James Crumley

Safe Delivery

In the empty desert borderlands of Texas and Chihuahua, exploitation is an equal opportunity business, and la mordida, the payoff, is part of every deal. When the corruption gets out of control, Border Patrol agent Dolph Martinez is often called in. Jim Sanderson introduced Dolph Martinez in his first novel, El Camino del Rio. The world-weary bicultural cop with a masterï¿½s degree in history and a soft spot for the exploited has been promoted. Now he serves on a task force that cuts through red tape on both sides of the border. One morning in Ojinaga, Dolph finds a pistol and a handful of phony documents in a suspectï¿½s backpack. Dolph calls in his troops and friends from El Camino del Rio and uncovers a group of heartless dirty dealers in a story that is only too true to todayï¿½s headlines. And Sandersonï¿½s fans will be delighted to find Dolph Martinez meeting up with private investigator Jerri Johnson and her retired Texas Ranger husband Joe Parr, the protagonists of Sandersonï¿½s San Antonio novel, Safe Delivery.

La Mordida

Roger Jackson is a grouch. He drinks too much with the wrong sorts of people. He dislikes where he lives―Beaumont, Texas, a small, humid southeast Texas town caught between a marsh and an impenetrable forest, between racial and social strife, between rival versions of Jesus. He dislikes his job―taking photos of cheating spouses. He dislikes his past. (He could have been a lawyer.) And now, he finds himself entangled in a crime. When the police find an aging ex-hippie dead from bullet wounds to the head and torso, they find Roger’s photos and want his help. Surrounded by a cast of colorful characters, Roger must do his job while maneuvering around the dangerous agendas of those around him. But the greatest obstacle is the recurring cocaine trail leading to Jewel McQueen, a small-time crook, who is guarded by his sociopathic brother, Sunshine McQueen, who hears voices from Jesus, Satan, and his mother. Jewell will stop at nothing―even murder―to keep his demented brother out of prison. Roger must leave the enclosed suburbs with their exclusive, prim, cleaned-up Jesus and cheap cocaine and liquor habits and, with his new partners, venture “behind the pine curtain,” into the deep Piney Woods with its wild, unruly Pentecostal Jesus and meth-lab economy and mentality.

Nothing to Lose

Humor & Satire

TCU Press

Whether sprawled on barstools or preaching from pulpits, people need to make sense of their world, and in Jim Sanderson’s world of West Texas, pulpits and barstools are where many of them do so. Sanderson himself stood for many years at a podium, teaching at a community college in Odessa, Texas. There, tired of academic papers and sometimes losing the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, he turned to the world around him to figure out the meaning (or meanings) of education and of culture itself. In a series of autobiographical ruminations, Sanderson develops the theme that frontier wildness is still alive, especially in West Texas, though it may be repressed by fundamentalist religion and conservative politics. West Texans, he finds, have to reconcile the two sides of their contrary natures: the farmer, best represented by the fundamental church, and the frontiersman, best represented by the sleazy bar. Through this theme of internal conflict, Sanderson weaves his experiences of art and censorship, Texas myths in film and fiction, the interaction of Hispanic culture with the culture of West Texas, contradictions posed by academic interests in vocational teaching institutions, intellectual elitism versus the real world, and West Texas women’s definition and self-definition. Through the examples of his students, he shows how the quest for the West Texas myth—freedom, liberation, and fulfillment—is always transforming, whether for good or bad. In the end, he recognizes that his insights may tell more about himself than about West Texas, but by trying to make meaning out of his experience, he tells us something about the way all of us learn and think about ourselves.

A West Texas Soapbox (Volume 2) (West Texas A & M University)

Essays & Correspondence

Texas A&M University Press

"Jim Sanderson has created a terrific story around a memorably roguish central character. . . . Nevin's History is a good, good-humored story, and Jim Sanderson is a writer to watch."―Dallas Morning News "This novel of Borderlands violence and romance is an enjoyable read for anyone, especially those interested in Texana. . . . The book's best character development is Nevin, who reveals that even a professed coward with scruples can display violence and even bravery when his own life is in the balance."―Southwestern Historical Quarterly "[An] exciting novel of those who fought to bring civilization to the southwest."―Susan Zabolotny, The Historical Novels Review "A delightful and instructive panorama of South Texas's late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century past. . . .An epic, exciting story."―Tom Pilkington, Tarleton State University The turbulent lower Rio Grande valley of the 1870s is the backdrop of this epic historical novel of romance, violence, and the struggle for civilization on the frontier. Against that backdrop protagonist Andrew Nevin, newspaper reporter, Civil War draft dodger, informer, and self-professed coward, tells a story of three legendary figures: Texas Rangers John “Rip” Ford and Lee H. McNelly and the bandit mayor of Matamoros, Juan Cortina. In 1875, cattle theft and savage retribution along the Rio Grande are approaching open warfare. The governor of Texas has appointed thirty-two-year-old consumptive McNelly to lead a special force of Rangers to end the banditry. Pursuing his goal, McNelly twice invades Mexico, with predictably violent results. Fifty-year-old Cortina, who lost his American citizenship after a war with his fellow Texans in the late 1850s, is rumored to be behind the rustling. Following these tensions is Rip Ford, who has retired to Brownsville after a long career through the Mexican and Civil Wars and fighting Comanches. Hoping to avert war with Mexico, Ford assigns Nevin, his nephew, to join McNelly’s force and report back to him. Suspected by everyone, Nevin treads an uncomfortably fine line, taking solace in the love of two women, Mexican courtesan Catalina Taracón, and Jessie Ford, Rip’s young wife. When events force Nevin to leave Brownsville and begin a new life in San Antonio as a saloon owner, theater critic, and reputed “nancy,” Rip and Jessie Ford and McNelly’s Rangers continue to influence his life, as do gunslingers and San Antonio citizens. In attempting to redeem himself by telling the history of the border wars, Nevin also chronicles the growth of San Antonio and the influence of civilization on South Texas at the end of one century and the beginning of another.

Nevin’s History: A Novel of Texas

Texas Tech University Press

Semi-Private Rooms (Kenneth Patchen Competition Series)

Poetry

Pig Iron Pr

Men Women and Love

Sun Features

Faded Love

Short Stories & Anthologies

Ink Brush Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sanderson, Jim. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sanderson, Jim

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sanderson, Jim. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

El Camino del Rio

El Camino del Rio

Safe Delivery

La Mordida

Nothing to Lose

A West Texas Soapbox (Volume 2) (West Texas A & M University)

Nevin’s History: A Novel of Texas

Semi-Private Rooms (Kenneth Patchen Competition Series)

Men Women and Love

Faded Love