Thin Men of Haddam

Set in southwestern New Mexico, “Thin Men of Haddam” deals with the problems of Hispanics trying to make their way in an Anglo world.  Orphaned as a child and reared by an Anglo family, Raphael Mendez lives in a nether world, neither de la raza nor Anglo. Having dropped out of graduate school after a squabble with his fellowship sponsors, he is foreman of the ranch of his childhood.  Paired against Mendez in this striking first novel is his cousin, Manuelo —practically literature, broke, and the father of six starving children, and unable to find work.  When Manuelo’s desperation pushes him to the other side of the law, Mendez must choose sides. The novel is impressive for its crisp, clear depiction of local life in the area known as “Little Texas” and for its intense portrayal of the desperation of some Hispanics at the time.

Thin men of Haddam

Smith, C. W.

Avon/Books

Went on a Journey, a Kiowa Native American in 1904 Oklahoma, is drawn away from his people into the violent and greedy world of the white man, where he is torn between two women, one white and the other Kiowa. Reissue.

Buffalo Nickel

Literature & Fiction

United States

Pocket_Books

Made immediately and immensely wealthy when oil is discovered on his land in 1917, David Copperfield, a Kiowa Indian, must sort out the conflicting demands of his life, his cultures, and the two women who pursue him

Poseidon Pr

When nineteen-year-old aviatrix Katie Burke crash lands her biplane on the only street in No Name, New Mexico, her arrival changes her life and the lives of everyone around her. As Katie and her craft need repair, locals take her in and help her, including a schoolteacher who longs for Katie's friendship, an interracial couple who own the town's diner, a handsome young mechanic who lives in a teepee, and a shell-shocked veteran of World War I. As her story unfolds, Katie's mysteries deepen--revealing shocking secrets, a scandalous past, and a future in true peril. Girl Flees Circus takes flight the moment Katie crashes to earth, promising a journey into the lives of a glamorous, redheaded stranger and the people she will change forever.

Girl Flees Circus: A Novel (Lynn and Lynda Miller Southwest Fiction Series)

Literary

University of New Mexico Press

Set in southwestern New Mexico, “Thin Men of Haddam” deals with the problems of Hispanics trying to make their way in an Anglo world. Orphaned as a child and reared by an Anglo family, Raphael Mendez lives in a nether world, neither de la raza nor Anglo. Having dropped out of graduate school after a squabble with his fellowship sponsors, he is foreman of the ranch of his childhood. Paired against Mendez in this striking first novel is his cousin, Manuelo —practically literature, broke, and the father of six starving children, and unable to find work. When Manuelo’s desperation pushes him to the other side of the law, Mendez must choose sides. 
The novel is impressive for its crisp, clear depiction of local life in the area known as “Little Texas” and for its intense portrayal of the desperation of some Hispanics at the time.

Thin Men of Haddam (Texas Tradition Series) (Volume 15)

TCU Press

In the "horse latitudes" of the Gulf of Mexico, that zone where long periods of high pressure keep the winds away, becalmed sailors sometimes tossed the horses overboard to conserve water. In these unapologetically traditional and realistic stories, characters find themselves in circumstances which demand similar difficult and undesirable acts. Because the stories are set in the Southwest and Mexico, from about 1920 through 1990, they often hinge on the suspicions, antagonism and ignorance the region's different cultures, races and classes bear against each other. C. W. Smith is an accomplished fictionalist whose vision rings true and whose characters are familiar in the best sense of the word. Although he has published four novels this is his first collection of short stories.

Letters From the Horse Latitudes

Texas Christian University Press

In Hunter’s Trap, Smith’s fifth novel, he creates a brooding tale of psychological suspense set on the film noir landscape of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. On the night of the vernal equniox 1930, Wilbur Smythe (a.k.a. Will Hunter) embarks on a plan to avenge the deaths of his wife and his employer, a wealthy Kiowa, both murdered by a banker greedy for the Kiowa’s oil money. A twentieth-century “western” blended with elements of Greek tragedy, Hunter’s Trap explores the textures of place and time, collision of cultures, and the thin margin between good and evil in members of the human family. Hunter’s Trap is a literary page turner that repays its readers from the first page to the last.

Hunter's Trap

In Hunter’s Trap, Smith’s fifth novel, he creates a brooding tale of psychological suspense set on the film noir landscape of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. On the night of the vernal equniox 1930, Wilbur Smythe (a.k.a. Will Hunter) embarks on a plan to avenge the deaths of his wife and his employer, a wealthy Kiowa, both murdered by a banker greedy for the Kiowa’s oil money. A twentieth-century “western” blended with elements of Greek tragedy, Hunter’s Trap explores the textures of place and time, collision of cultures, and the thin margin between good and evil in members of the human family. Hunter’s Trap is a literary page turner that repays its readers from the first page to the last.

It’s 1956, and James Robert (Jimbo) Proctor has just turned sixteen when his Uncle Waylan and his new wife Vicky invite Jimbo to spend a summer toiling in the New Mexico oil patch. Jimbo dreams that heaving heavy metal about will serve as well as a Charles Atlas course to make a man of him, but he lands smack dab in a domestic fracas that has his uncle living in his machine shop and sneaking out with Sharon, his secretary. Meanwhile Jimbo’s Aunt Vicky leads a protest against a fundamentalist book ban and rails against American H-bomb tests on Bikini. James sets out to solve the case of what he calls The Hardy Boy and the Mystery of the Marital Estrangement, but when he meets Sharon's cousin, Trudy, and plummets into love himself, the mystery of what brings men and women together or keeps them apart only deepens into confusion and torment. And James has more to learn than why we love and how we earn a mate both deserved and deserving. He’s coming of age in a pivotal year in an era of repression and transition: the Brown decision, hardly two years old, meets die-hard resistance among segregationists; Rosa Parks has just refused to take a back seat; playwright Arthur Miller marries Marilyn Monroe and gets a contempt citation from the House Un-American Activities Committee; Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver lose in a landslide to Ike and Dick Nixon; Ed Sullivan claims he’ll never let “Elvis the Pelvis” on his TV show; and a southern senator warns Americans against the insidious influence of “foreign” films. In Jimbo’s hometown of Dallas, right-wing complaints of “Red” artists succeed in censoring a traveling art show sponsored by the United States Information Agency; civil defense drills sweep the nation to prepare Americans for nuclear war; sponsor General Electric withdraws an episode of the wildly popular drama “Medic” because it reveals too much about a Caesarean section; and abortions are so forbidden even descriptions of them are stricken from books. How such things—things he might’ve thought remote and irrelevant—come to bear heavily on his green life is the thrust of his summer's education, and he leaves New Mexico on the cusp not so much of manhood but of adult responsibility.

Understanding Women

In the “horse latitudes” of the Gulf of Mexico, that zone where periods of high pressure keep winds away, becalmed sailors sometimes tossed the horses overboard to conserve water. In these unapologetically traditional and realistic stories, characters find themselves in circumstances which demand similar difficult and undesirable acts. Because the stories are set in the Southwest and Mexico, from about 1920 through 1990, they often hinge on the suspicions, antagonism, and ignorance that the region’s different cultures, races, and classes bear against each other.

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

Books by Smith, C. W.

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

Thin men of Haddam

Buffalo Nickel

Buffalo Nickel

Girl Flees Circus: A Novel (Lynn and Lynda Miller Southwest Fiction Series)

Thin Men of Haddam (Texas Tradition Series) (Volume 15)

Letters From the Horse Latitudes

Hunter's Trap

Hunter's Trap

Understanding Women

Letters From the Horse Latitudes