Complex and intriguing book which centers on a woman who accompanies her tubercular husband from Baltimore on a move to Bowie, Arizona, to improve his health. Her Baltimore mores and customs mean nothing to her in Bowie, where she's swept up by the span and breadth of the desert. She learns to ride horses, taught by a local man with whom she starts an affair. Discovering the adultry, the man's 12 year old daughter runs her horse off a cliff to her death, which is also the death of the affair. The second half of the book details the recovery of the various players and their cohorts. The Baltimore oriole rebuilds an ancient ruined mission and starts a building company; the adulturous man reopens his marble mine, the cuckold returns to Baltimore, healed of his active TB.

This book is well written, complex, and evolves in a surprising, but very satisfactory manner. ( )