Beyond Santa Fe, June 8, 2008 – Amazon.com

Review by E.G Lopez, author of “Sirena” – www.sirenathenovel.com

Our heroes have always been cowboys. Kermit Lopez helps us to "know better." History has always been written by the winners. The conquered and their stories, histories, disappear into the sands of time. Thank you, Kermit Lopez, for a peek back into the other history. Texans feared the Llano Estacado, that dreadful, featureless plain that encompassed eastern New Mexico and western Texas, a plain that the Spanish, led by Coronado, a people who had already navigated the world's great oceans, had supposedly navigated successfully only by dint of stakes, estacas, driven into the plain along their route to Kansas, kind of like a Hansel and Gretel trail of crumbs. The Texans feared the llano and its denizens, the Comanche. The Spanish had been at home on the llano for two hundred years, harvesting the buffalo, el Cibolo. Ciboleros, galloping along the fringes of a herd of buffalo racing across the plain, lances at the ready, risking death beneath the thundering hooves, courageous, they were not afraid of dealing with the Comanche. The Texans, deprecated, depreciated them as Comancheros.

Antonio Baca, retired Cibolero, must now hunt the Texans, as he once hunted the Cibolo, across the llano. Texans have ravaged his family and kidnapped his daughter. Lopez knows his history. He also knows how to spin a good story. This tale is worth five stars. Lopez grabs you somewhere out in the middle of New Mexico and doesn't let you go until he has ripped aside the blinders, veils, and deposited you, eyes wide open, hundreds of miles away in western Texas. This is a must read for anyone with an interest in "other" histories, other slants on the American story, other views of New Mexico beyond the Santa Fe experience.