Having first visited the Big Bend in 1928, Kenneth B. Ragsdale has been digging around in and writing about the region for the last forty years. Building his stories around themes of compassion, conflict, and compromise, he profiles both famous and relatively unknown figures. He tells stories of curanderas (healers), charity workers, a woman who practiced medicine without a license, and another who started a private lending library in her store to encourage rural, poor children to read. In contrast to these stories, he chronicles blood feuds, shootouts, and the violence bred in wild, relatively lawless spaces. In a fascinating play on levels of meaning, Ragsdale traces the legacy of J. Frank Dobie and his stories of buried treasure - treasure that turned out to be that of the imagination if not of gold. Finally, he turns his attention to the cinematic portrayal of life in the Big Bend. He looks at the filming of Giant both as a subtext of its own - how the coming of celebrity and celebrities affected local lifestyles and self-perceptions - and as a cultural commentary on the popular perception of the West.
- ISBN10 089096811X
- ISBN13 9780890968116
- Publish Date 1 May 1998
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 24 April 2015
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Texas A & M University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 281
- Language English