VALLEY OF THE SHINING STONE

North by northwest from old Santa Fe is the winding road to Abiquiu (ah-be-cue'), Ghost Ranch, and el Valle de la Piedra Lumbre, the Valley of Shining Stone: mythical names in a near-mythical place, captured for the ages in the famous paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe.

O'Keeffe saw the magic of sandstone cliffs and turquoise skies, but her life and death here are only part of the story. Reading almost like a novel, this book spills over with other legends buried deep in time, the stories of Pueblo Indians who have claimed this land for generations.

Underlying these stories is the saga of Ghost Ranch itself, a last living vestige of the Old West ideal of horses, cowboys, and wide-open spaces. Readers will meet a virtual Who's Who of visitors from “dude ranch” days, ranging from such luminaries as Willa Cather, Ansel Adams, and Charles Lindbergh to World War II scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues. Indispensable for travelers, pure pleasure for history buffs and general readers, these pages are a magic carpet to a magic land: Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch, the Valley of Shining Stone.

Lesley Poling-Kempes
Author of many books about the American Southwest, Poling-Kempes book, Bone Horses, was winner of the WILLA Literary Award in Contemporary Fiction and the Tony Hillerman Award for Best Fiction. Her nonfiction books include Ghost Ranch, Valley of Shining Stone: The Story of Abiquiu, and The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West. She lives in Abiquiu, New Mexico.