The Turquoise

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Miffflin - The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1946. Hard Back. Good. 5 1/2" x 8. 377 Pages. Spine is a bit frayed at the top and bottom of the spine. One bumped and worn corner. This is the 1946 Riverside Press edition, though obviously a used book, is still complete and reasonably tight with white pages. From the Author's Notes: All the main characters are. fictional except - perhaps - Fey. One summer day, the year before she died, Mary Austin and I drove from Santa Fe to my father's ranch. As we left Mary's beautiful home on the Camino del Monte Sol, we both looked at the guardian peak behind it. The little mountain held for her a mystical significance. We talked of that, and then she said, quite casually. Once there lived a woman on that slope of Atalaya. There was little more, a few sentences mentioning New York and strange contrast, only the hint of a forgotten legend.I, too, forgot it, during many later visits to Santa Fe. Then one day that rhythmical sentence came back, I went again to Santa Fe to find the story. I did not find it in the museum or historical libraries or town records, no trace of it in the memory of the 'Anglos.' But at last, in a crumbling adobe near the Chapel of San Miguel, I found an old Spanish-American, and he remembered a little. It must be, Senora, that you mean La Santa. It was so long ago. I was young then. So here is the story. I do not know, but I believe it may have been something like this.