Books by Loretta Miles Tollefson

Short stories set in Old New Mexico, many based on actual people or events. Includes:That Damn Mule - A green-broke mule balks at the rain-slicked shale on a narrow mountain path.That'll Teach 'Em - A group of trappers encounters Apaches in the Gila wilderness.They Were My Friends - A tale of friendship and betrayal during the Taos uprising against American occupation.Decisions - A young woman must find a way to cross cultural barriers and marry the Pueblo man she loves.Obsessions - An Episcopal Methodist missionary interferes in Maxwell Land Grant Company politics and suffers the consequences.

Poems that celebrate the stories in the New Testament through the eyes of the people who lived them.

But Still My Child is a set of poems from the heart of one grieving woman to another.Written over a period of thirty years, these poems express the immediate pain as well as the lingering ache that miscarriage can bring. They do not provide easy answers. Instead, they acknowledge the pain while seeking to provide the comfort and companionship that only someone who has also experienced the loss of an unborn child can share.

Suzanna hates everything about her New Mexico mountain home. The isolation. The short growing season. The critters after her corn. The long snow-bound winters in a dimly-lit cabin.But she loves Gerald, who loves this valley.So Suzanna does her unhappy best to adjust, even when the babies come, both of them in the middle of winter. Her postpartum depression, the cold, and the lack of sunlight push her to the edge.But the Sangre de Cristo mountains contain a menace far more dangerous than Suzanna's internal struggles. The man Gerald killed in the mountains of the Gila two years ago isn't as dead as everyone thought.And his lust for Suzanna may be even stronger than his desire for Gerald's blood.

Just a man.Known for his character, not the color of his skin.That's all Gerald, son of a free black man and an Irish servant girl, wants to be.It's an impossible goal in slave-holding Missouri, but in the West, mountain men and villagers alike seem to accept him without question.New Mexico is all that Gerald hoped for, but shortly after he arrives in Taos, he realizes he wants more than he'd thought: A girl with her own complex ancestry and a high mountain valley with intriguing potential.To make either dream possible, Gerald needs to earn something more than a scratch living. The only way to do that is to trap beaver. It's a tough way to earn cash and the wilderness is an unforgiving place.Can Gerald survive the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the Mohave Indians, and the arid south rim of the Grand Canyon as well as the fellow trapper who hates him for the color of his skin? Can he prove to himself and the girl he loves that he is, after all, not just any man?

At the foot of a lonely mountain pass between Taos and Elizabethtown, a single log cabin huddles under the pines. Travelers are invited inside to stop, rest, and eat.But they should be careful how they look at the young woman who serves them. Her husband, Charles Kennedy, is subject to jealous rages.At least, he says that's why he kills the unwary: It's all Gregoria's fault.Based on a true story.