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  Featured Books: Elfego Baca
 
LAW AND ORDER, LTD.
The Rousing Life of Elfego Baca of New Mexico
By Kyle Samuel Crichton

Facsimile of the 1928 Edition with a New Foreword by Stan Sager and Preface by Marc Simmons.

The year is 1928. Forty-four Octobers have come and gone since Elfego Baca earned top ranking as a gunfighter. Few now remember that on a fall day in 1884, in the village of Frisco, New Mexico, Baca ducked some 4,000 bullets fired by eighty cowboys aiming to kill him. Fewer still recall that the reason for the shoot-out was Baca’s obsession with rescuing Mexican settlers from abuse by Texans in days before “civil rights” became a catch phrase.

The reputation of the Hero-now turned-lawman-lawyer-politician is sorely in need of repair, for despite his boasts of possessing one of the best law practices in the state, things have not gone well for Baca. Elfego has been declared a bankrupt; he’s been humiliated by an untidy divorce; and neither political party in the state seems to want to run him as a candidate for much of anything. So, what’s a man of action to do?

What Elfego does is to make a pre-emptive strike to repair that tattered reputation. He finds a biographer to tell his story just like he wants it told, including his meetings with Billy the Kid and the opera star, Mary Garden. He finally settles on Kyle Samuel Crichton, but only after William A. Keleher, the respected journalist-lawyer, has said, “No.” Keleher introduces Baca to Crichton, who has few writing credentials though he would later author popular books and a successful Broadway play.

Crichton has escaped from the smoke stacks and slag heaps of the Pennsylvania mining country to the pure air of Albuquerque, not to repair the reputation of those like Elfego who have fallen from grace, but to repair his own health. While Elfego is as short as Napoleon, Crichton is taller than Gary Cooper. While Elfego is rotund, Crichton is thin and muscular. While Elfego is bold, Crichton is cautious. But Crichton, who later wrote a biography of the Metropolitan Opera star Risë Stevens (Subway to the Met), brings a wild sense of humor that was to be reflected in all his books. And, while Baca is long on yarns that boost his heroism, Crichton insists on balance. The narrative of the book the pair produced remains open to question: How much of it is fact, how much is flights of fancy?

Whichever it is, it’s a whale of a story about a life lived to a fullness rarely experienced.

Sample Chapter
Secure Movie & TV Rights
Website: http://books.google.com/books?id=_6K9rEq4eCYC

Hardcover:
6 X 9
ISBN: 978-1-63293-499-4
284 pp.,$36.95

Softcover:
6 X 9
ISBN: 978-0-86534-668-0
284 pp.,$26.95


VIVA ELFEGO
The Case for Elfego Baca, Hispanic Hero
By Stan Sager

“I will show them there is at least one Mexican in the country who is not afraid of a Texas cowboy.” Having drawn the line, teenager Elfego Baca backed up his words with his six guns. Nobody, but nobody, even Texans, would any longer subject the peaceful Mexican settlers of the New Mexico frontier to abuse, mutilation or humiliation. It took Baca just thirty-six hours in the fall of 1884 to earn his reputation as savior of the Hispanics of the Territory of New Mexico. When the gun-smoke had blown away, the eighty Texans who had poured over 4,000 bullets and a few charges of dynamite into the hut where the teen had taken refuge, toasted his survival with drinks at Milligan’s Whiskey Bar. In the sixty years that followed, Elfego made himself into a lawyer often known for sleaze, a politician suspected of dealing under the table, a guy who liked his liquor too much, a bankrupt, and the object of a $30,000 reward by Pancho Villa. But why? Why did the hero fall from grace?

Stan Sager has laid out the reasons for Baca’s heroism and why he later destroyed his own reputation. Sager’s book looks into the hero’s childhood in Kansas to find the roots of both his valor and his vulnerability. It tells of the events of his young manhood that made it necessary for the kid who grew up in Topeka speaking English only, to fit himself into the Spanish-speaking community of Socorro the only way he knew how--by bravado and bluster. It relates the bizarre activities that led him to lose his reputation as a hero. And finally, it explains why the hero self-destructed, and it pleas for his forgiveness.

Sager is a retired New Mexico attorney who has tried lawsuits and argued cases all over the state. He’s the author of several published articles, including Elfego Baca. He co-founded a law firm in Albuquerque, which grew into one of the largest in New Mexico and has taught as an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture. He was a State Bar Commissioner, and has received numerous awards for his service to low income persons, including the Professionalism Award, as well as the LaFollette Pro Bono Award and others. He was given the Judge Woodrow B. Seals Award by the Perkins School of Theology, SMU, for service to the church, the community and the world for setting up an internal audit department within The United Methodist Church, writing denominational fiscal policies, and his work on behalf of those in poverty. In retirement, he serves on the State Supreme Court’s Commission on Access to Justice, recently formed to help the poor of the state obtain access to justice. Stan has contributed historical articles to State Bar publications, and has written articles on disability for various magazines and newspapers. Today he speaks often on Elfego Baca and on issues relating to Navajo mythology and theology.

Sample Chapter
Secure Movie & TV Rights
Website: http://books.google.com/books?id=ZbKfX6Fzjk0C

Hardcover:
6 X 9
ISBN: 978-1-63293-498-7
280 pp.,$36.95

Softcover:
6 X 9
ISBN: 978-0-86534-608-6
280 pp.,$24.95

eBook:
ISBN: 978-1-61139-103-9
280 pp.,$4.99


 
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