J. P. S. Brown

Born into a family of cattlemen on the southern Arizona border at the beginning of the Great Depression, Mikey Summers is raised by people who are wilder than the animals under their care. Maggie, his mother, is quick to love, but also quick to fight, loves contention as much as peace, likes to run and play, but is decent with a fine moral sense. She does hard work as though tapping for a dance, but can be as mean and ill-tempered as she is decent and good. Paul Summers, his father, loves to cowboy, ride broncs, get drunk with Maggie's brothers, be Maggie's husband as long as it is fun, but tries not to get serious about any of it. When Maggie reminds him that he will have to stop running and playing and be responsible, he only grins. As his parents and uncles and their families work and play hard to keep their world from dying of drought, disease, and the Depression, Mikey revels in its fathers, mothers, horses, dirt, dogs, cows, and trees and learns that he must fight his own battles to keep it. Based on J. P. S. Brown's own experiences growing up and ranching in Mexico and Arizona, The World in Pancho's Eye offers an honest and heartfelt portrayal of the life of working cowboys and the love they and their families have for the job.

The World in Pancho's Eye

A close-knit group of Anglo and Hispanic families struggle to keep their southern Arizona ranches alive amidst the dual threats of drug lords and smugglers.

Wolves at Our Door

Linda Skeers

When she receives a ballerina costume from her uncle, Emma, who does not know how to be a ballerina, gets a lot of advice from friends and family.

Tutus Aren't My Style

A collection of Southwestern short fiction from a fifth-generation Arizona cattleman-turned-writer is set in Mexico and tells of cowboy jaunts and cattle-ranching dreams.

The Cinnamon Colt and Other Stories

Along the border of southern Arizona and northern Mexico, a close-knit group of Anglo and Hispanic families struggle to keep their ranches alive amidst the depredations of drug lords and smugglers. Here, age-old values collide with gangs of hardened border criminals. Ninety-nine percent of border traffic crosses American ranchland. Seventy-five-year-old Jim Kane's 7X ranch is right in the middle of today's border trouble. The people who come looking for work are trouble, but not a deadly threat. To Kane, the drug traffickers and the unscrupulous "coyotes" who traffic in poor people are the deadly threats to the nation.

A.B. Cowden is long, lean, and every bit as tough as the unforgiving frontier where he makes his home. Since before the Civil War his beef cows have grazed the Arizona range. It was a time when ranchers were neighbors united in the ongoing war against the Apaches and the bandits from south of the border. But in 1885 barbed wire and greed rode into Arizona along with an Eastern cattle baron and ruthless hired guns, like the trigger-happy Briggs brothers. As patriarch of the Cowden clan, A.B. picked up his rifle to face these bushwhackers and thieves. But even his sure-shot and iron will could not save his son Ben from having a price put on his head or his daughter from a greater danger--a band of renegade Apache warriors led by the great chief called Yawner.

J. P. S. Brown

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