Branigan book club features New Mexico authors in April, May Zooms

Thomas Branigan Memorial Library’s Purple Sage Book Club will host two prominent New Mexico authors in live Zoom presentations in April and May.

• 12:30 p.m. Thursday, April 29: Lynda Sánchez, co-author of “Indeh, An Apache Odyssey,” with Apache historian Eve Ball. Sanchez will talk about Apache legends and history during the presentation. She will also discuss how she and Ball met, worked together while researching/writing and some of their adventures doing so.

Sánchez, who lives in Lincoln, New Mexico, is also the author of “Apache Legends and Lore of Southern Mexico” and “Eve Ball, Woman Among Men.” Sánchez is a retired educator and she and her husband raise corriente (roping) cattle along the Rio Bonito.

• 12:30 p.m. Thursday, May 6: Vicky Ramakka, author of “The Cactus Plot: Murder in the High Desert.”

“’The Cactus Plot’ is an environmental novel set in northwest New Mexico,” said Ramakka, who lives in New Mexico, a few miles south of the Colorado border. “The novel’s heroine is a botanist hired by the Bureau of Land Management to survey endangered plants. The characters she meets – cowboy, oil and gas hand, environmentalist, tourist and Navajo biologist – represent the many uses of BLM land. Some become allies, one ends up threatening her life.

‘The Cactus Plot’ is the NM-AZ Book Awards 2020 winner for best cozy mystery and was a finalist in the Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVY Awards and the New Mexico Press Women Communications Contest, Ramakka said.

“I wanted to produce an entertaining mystery novel, while bringing out various viewpoints and challenges in preserving endangered plants,” she said. As a long-time educator, I am especially pleased to hear readers comment that they learned more about endangered plants and public lands from ‘The Cactus Plot.’

“During my career as a college administrator, I wrote numerous reports, grant applications and marketing materials. Now I have the freedom to write creatively and have published articles in local, regional and national magazines.

Email sagelibrary@las-cruces.org for links to each presentation.

For more information, contact Zimmerman at 575-491-5041 and czimmerman@las-cruces.org.