Bones Incandescent: The Pajarito Journals of Peggy Pond Church

(Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2001)

Winner of the Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association

“This book is filled with love—that of Peggy Pond Church for the desolate and sometimes demanding

landscapes of central New Mexico, and that of editor Shelley Armitage for Church and her writings. In

Armitage’s hands, Church’s poetry and essays come alive, on more than one occasion sending chills

along the reader’s spine. Armitage also makes it clear that far from being frightened by nature, women

like Church immersed themselves in it, bonded with it, and wrote tellingly of it. Armitage, herself a

woman on the land, reveals how women, then and now, feminize nature, and make it their own. This

volume is a triumph—for women, for nature, and for women in nature.”—Glenda Riley

“. . .Without agenda or sentiment, Church’s explorations probe boundaries and assumptions

traditionally attached to gender, adding to the scope of her journals and helping to make them, as

Shelley Armitage has pointed out in her extensively researched and gracefully written commentaries,

vibrant contributions to the growing body of women’s autobiography.”—Leslie Ullman