In the vast, sparsely populated area of West Texas known as the Big Bend, life takes place on a different scale. The nearest neighbor can be forty miles away, perhaps located not just in another town but another country, the border historically less obvious than it is today. In the small-town, bicultural atmosphere of the Big Bend, musicians from both sides of the Rio Grande come together, creating music that spans genre, culture, and international borders.From Ojinaga, Mexico, to Alpine, Texas, and most points in between, writer Marcia Hatfield Daudistel and photographer Bill Wright have gathered, through hours of interviews, a trove of anecdotes, images, and personal recollections that explore what makes music - and musicians - in the Big Bend slightly different from anything found elsewhere. Playing big band music one night for a dance at Marfa Army Air Field and border polkas the next evening at a quinceaNera; playing a traditional norteNo and conjunto but throwing in the saxophone to change the dynamic; making a living with their music or keeping their day jobs and playing when they can: these are the stories that demonstrate the cultural and musical versatility required for musicians in the Big Bend. From the porch at Terlingua's Starlight Theatre to the jukebox at Lajitas, Across the Border and Back: Music in the Big Bend features the people, the history, the local color, the venues, and, above all, the distinctive attitude that have defined music-making in this place, at once one of the most remote and most unique in the country.

In "Grace & Gumption: The Women of El Paso," thirteen contributors trace the history of El Paso from the distaff side. The women who settled El Paso faced an unusual reality. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo changed the border, and people who were previously citizens of Mexico--living in their native country, speaking their native language--were suddenly citizens of the United States, forced to speak a foreign language.
Editor Marcia Hatfield Daudistel gathers together authoritative voices who examine the bicultural identity of this city through the various roles the women assumed: artist and muse, philanthropist, healer, writer, historian, nun, suffragette, and businesswoman. The result is a new look at this city nestled between rivers, mountains, a military base, and Mexico.
The women in this volume are just a few who left a legacy in El Paso. Their stories are kept alive through the memories of their families, the oral history of the "Comadres," and in the history books. Their accomplishments were hard-won and required courage, persistence, inspiration, and especially grace and gumption.
Contributors include Adair Margo, Mimi R. Gladstein, Yolanda Leyva, Nancy Miller Hamilton, Irasema Coronado, Lois Marchino, Deane Mansfield-Kelley, Meredith Abarca, Susan Goodman Novick, Lucy Fischer-West, Brenda Risch, Evelyn Posey, and Daudistel.