Paso Por Aqui and the Desire of the Moth

Eugene Manlove Rhodes, who coined New Mexico’s official state nickname “the Land of Enchantment,” was a superlative writer of fiction in the Southwest during the early twentieth century. This new annotated edition of two of his best novels provides the ideal introduction to this unjustly neglected writer. A real-life cowboy, rancher, miner, and army scout for twenty-five years before launching his literary career, Eugene Manlove Rhodes depicted the times and terrain of southern New Mexico in popular fiction hailed for its realism. He elevated the Western novel to a literary art form. Rhodes is best remembered today for the brief novel that is generally considered his masterpiece, Pasó por Aquí. Inspired by the 1905 robbery of the First National Bank of Belén, Rhodes’s story follows bank robber Ross McEwen as he is pursued across the deadly wasteland of the infamous Jornada del Muerto by a posse led by legendary New Mexican lawman Pat Garrett. Like Pasó por Aquí, The Desire of the Moth offers a revisionist Western featuring a hero on the lam from the law—but in this story, largely set around Las Cruces, New Mexico, the alleged criminal is actually an innocent man targeted for lynching by his political opponents. This new annotated edition of two of Rhodes’s best-loved stories includes an introductory essay and notes by critic Gary Scharnhorst along with a map of Gene Rhodes’s New Mexico showing important sites mentioned in the stories.