Peggy Pond Church is a renowned New Mexican poet and author. She lived at Los Alamos for 20 years. Amazon.com lists other works by her, some with coauthors, about this beautiful region surrounding Los Alamos and about the Los Alamos Ranch School.

This book tells the story of Edith Warner, an unusual woman who lived in the house near the Otowi Bridge over the Rio Grande River. The bridge is located at rare flat region just upstream from the Black Rock Canyon and downstream from the land of the people of the San Ildefonso Pueblo. The house at the Otowi Bridge afforded great views of the musical waters of the Rio Grande, the entrance to the Black Rock Canyon, the Pajarito Plateau (land of mesas around Los Alamos), and the Jemez Mountains (an ancient volcanic rim). From the river to mountains, the altitudes are roughly 4,500 ft, 5,800 ft, 7,200 ft and 10,500 ft, with many great hiking trails from the canyon lands to the mesas to the mountains to explore. I especially enjoyed the great botanical changes: from the low country of cactus, pinion pines and junipers, up to tall ponderosa pines and then up higher to the aspen groves of the upper Jemez, the volcanic crater rim that surrounds the well-named grasslands of the Valles Grande down in the caldera, where black Angus cattle are mere tiny specks in the huge green pastures. I hiked through most of this beautiful variety during my many visits to the Los Alamos National Lab, especially during a six-month sabbatical leave in 1985.

Peggy Pond Church’s father Ashley Pond founded the Los Alamos Ranch School in 1917 to offer a healthy place for a classical college-prep education that included the many outdoor activities the site offered. She married Fermor Church, who was the Ranch School master. Outside Fuller Lodge, the remnant of the Ranch School, lies a pond aptly named Ashley Pond. (When a newcomer, I assumed that the pond was named after someone named Ashley, but soon learned of my mistake which most newcomers make.) Our government chose Los Alamos for its atomic-bomb research laboratory site in WW II because of its remoteness and the easily controlled access to the mesas. The original bridge was replaced to handle the heavy traffic to Los Alamos. While I was there I had opportunities to talk to some of the remaining original lab personnel. They supplemented what I had learned while a graduate student at Indiana University from its professors who had also worked on the atomic-bomb research. The professors were much more likely than were the original Los Alamos personnel I met to feel great regret that their work led to the deaths of so many Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When I saw this book at a semi-annual book sale at the Ames library, I bough it thinking it may tell me more of how things were in the Los Alamos area both before and after the lab was founded, especially since the book’s back cover has these words: “This is the story of Edith Warner, who lived for more than twenty years as a neighbor to the Indians of the San Ildefonso Pueblo, near Los Alamos, New Mexico. She was a remarkable woman, a friend to everyone who knew her, from her Indian companion Tilano, who was an elder of San Ildefonso, to Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, and the other atomic scientists who worked at Los Alamos during WW II.” This led me to expect much more than the book contained of the scientists there – little more than that they enjoyed being away from the lab sharing a meal with whatever company they found at Edith Warner’s house by the bridge. I learned much more about the peaceful ways of life at San Ildefonso – how these Indians accepted her and loved the way she listened more than she talked. They helped her with any hard tasks, including property repairs and harvesting of the various foods she grew next to the house.

I agree with most of the praise that Oliver la Farge gave this book: “A finely told tale of a strange land and a rare character who united with it and, without seeming to do anything to that end, exerted an unusual influence upon all other lovers of that soil with whom she came in contact. The quality of the country, of the many kinds of people, and of the central character come through excellently.” I would at least change his word “strange” into “enchanting,” which is what I feel best describes that land. Had this book contained more of what I was looking for, I would have rated it higher.