When American explorers crossed the Texas Panhandle, they dubbed it part of the “Great American Desert.” A “sea of grass,” the llano appeared empty, flat, and barely habitable. Contemporary developments—cell phone towers, oil rigs, and wind turbines—have only added to this stereotype. Yet in this lyrical ecomemoir, Shelley Armitage charts a unique rediscovery of the largely unknown land, a journey at once deeply personal and far-reaching in its exploration of the connections between memory, spirit, and place. Armitage begins her narrative with the intention to walk the llano from her family farm thirty meandering miles along the Middle Alamosa Creek to the Canadian River. Along the way, she seeks the connection between her father and one of the area’s first settlers, Ysabel Gurule, who built his dugout on the banks of the Canadian. Armitage, who grew up nearby in the small town of Vega, finds this act of walking inseparable from the act of listening and writing. “What does the land say to us?” she asks as she witnesses human alterations to the landscape—perhaps most catastrophic the continued drainage of the land’s most precious resource, the Ogallala Aquifer. Yet the llano’s wonders persist: dynamic mesas and canyons, vast flora and fauna, diverse wildlife, rich histories. Armitage recovers the voices of ancient, Native, and Hispano peoples, their stories interwoven with her own: her father’s legacy, her mother’s decline, a brother’s love. The llano holds not only the beauty of ecological surprises but a renewed realization of kinship in a world ever changing. Reminiscent of the work of Terry Tempest Williams and John McPhee, Walking the Llano is both a celebration of an oft-overlooked region and a soaring testimony to the power of the landscape to draw us into greater understanding of ourselves and others by experiencing a deeper connection with the places we inhabit.

Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place

Biographies & Memoirs

Armitage, Shelley

Community & Culture

University of Oklahoma Press

John Held, Jr., illustrator of the jazz age

Arts & Photography

Graphic Design

Syracuse University Press

John Held Jr: Illustrator of the Jazz Age

Syracuse Univ Pr

Kewpies and Beyond: The World of Rose O'Neill (Studies in Popular Culture)

A self-made woman with no formal art training, O'Neill (1875-1944) was not only hugely financially successful through her illustration work and the production of Kewpie dolls, but exhibited drawings and sculpture in solo shows in Paris and New York. Kewpie made her a famous figure commercially but few recognize her today as a serious artist and a political subversive who expressed sympathy for minorities, suffragettes, and victims of intolerance, and struggled with her own expression in a male-dominated field. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

A self-made woman with no formal art training, Rose O'Neill (1875-1944) was not only hugely financially successful through her illustration work and the production of Kewpie dolls, but also through her exhibited drawings and sculpture in solo shows in Paris and New York. Kewpie made her a famous figure commercially, but few recognize her today as a serious artist and a political subversive who expressed sympathy for minorities, suffragettes, and victims of intolerance and who struggled with her own expression in a male-dominated field.

History & Criticism

A Habit of Landscape

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Finishing Line Press

The Life and Work of the fascinating creator of the Kewpie doll.

Kewpies and Beyond: The World of Rose O'Neill (Studies in Popular Culture Series)

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