Book excerpt: Growing up in a Spanish American culture in the American West at the turn of the twentieth century invites assimilation, a process made all the more conflicted through the evolving stages of individuation and the tensions of political correctness and hyphenated identities: Anglo-American, Spanish-American, Mexican-American, Native American, and the subcultures of Stompers, Pachucos, Chicanos, Cholos, Indios, and Squares. This book contains a dozen interconnected stories set against these laminated ethnicities. Whether read as love songs or laments these soul stories all serenade the American Southwest and its allure as a landscape of adventure and romance during the transition from Old to New West. It is said that a land determines a people and is determined by them, a belief told lyrically and poignantly in these story serenades. Includes Readers Guide.