William Curry Holden – författare

"The reminiscences of a Yaqui Indian born in 1896 in northwestern Mexico whose story begins during the Yaqui revolutionary period, continues through the last uprising in 1926, and ends with [his] recollections of his life on a Texas farm from 1952 to 1969. The introduction by Professor Kelley adds scholarly analysis to the poignant autobiographical narrative."-Booklist "A powerful chronicle...It deserves an important place in the annals of American Indian oral history and literature."-Bernard L. Fontana, New Mexico Historical Review "A valuable document ...about the effects of the Diaz Indian policy in Sonora on the human beings who were its object. [It] tells the story of the social limbo created by the shattering of families and corruption of personal relations under the relentless pressures of the Yaqui deportation program."-Edward H. Spicer, Arizona and the West "The nightmare world of witchcraft and dream-dependence is one of the major fascinations of this strange and moving book...[Its understatement] acquires a kind of fascinating power, as does the laconic stoicism of the Yaqui himself."-Southern California Quarterly Jane Holden Kelley, a professor of archaeology at the University of Calgary, is the author of Yaqui Women: Contemporary Life Histories (1978), also a Bison Book. Her father, William Curry Holden, a trained historian and anthropologist, met the Yaqui narrator of this chronicle, Rosalio Moises, in 1934. They remained close friends until Moises's death in 1969.

A Ranching Saga tells the story of father and son pioneer ranchers in the Southwest. Around the turn of the century, William Electious Halsell and Ewing Halsell were integral to the growing ranching industry in Texas and Oklahoma. Through newspaper accounts, legal documents, personal correspondence, and interviews with family members, friends, and acquaintances, A Ranching Saga recounts the lives of these two keen businessmen, proud civic leaders, and philanthropists. What is revealed is a legacy of hard work, moral character, and compassion, as well as a close relationship with the land. Texas historian William Curry Holden sifts through correspondence, reports and statistics, and extensive research to tell of three generations of the Halsell family, from their arrival in Texas in 1854 to the mid-twentieth century. Holden enriches the family narrative with personal accounts of the places, geology, flora, fauna, weather, economics, and history of the region. He interviewed more than 150 people to understand the characters and personalities of the two men whose cultural influence on Texas and the Southwest region spans more than a century. Illustrated with nearly two dozen drawings by José Cisneros , A Ranching Saga is the biography of family whose destiny was realized in the cattle they nurtured, the land they loved, and the people they encouraged along the way.