THE PLACE WHERE SOULS ARE BORN: A Journey into the American Southwest

Simon & Schuster, 1992. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. New/New. Surprisingly, no illustrations. CONDITION: UNREAD 1992 Simon & Schuster hardcover (blue boards) & dust jacket, first edition, first printing. Deckle edges. No illustrations. Introduction by Jan Morris. CONTENT: I have always had a problem with the term "lyrical" being applied to non-fiction works. I was wrong. THIS is lyrical. Australian novelist Keneally brings his lively imagination to bear on the American Southwest. This is a sometimes sketchy account of a midwinter swing, by car and cross-country skis, through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Keneally doesn't talk to people much, and his reactions to landscapes can be predictable: ``Maybe religion is so strong in this landscape because this is terrain which puts the human in his place.'' But as in The Playmaker and Schindler's List, history is what moves him. He offers lively capsule biographies of figures who sum up an impulse, an era, a landscape, a paradox: Mormon prophet Brigham Young, silver tycoon Horace Tabor, the young scientists who were casualties of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. The proclaimed centerpiece of the book is a visit to Mesa Verde, that uplifting site in southwest Colorado where a thousand years of Native American history can be read from its architecture: pit houses, mesa-top temples, cliff palaces. Why did the accomplished Anasazi, its inhabitants, clear out after A.D. 1300? Was their mission to settle again in the wilderness, to start from scratch- -akin to the drive that sent the Mormons from upstate New York to Utah? His engaging narrative seamlessly interweaves the doings of Butch Cassidy, Georgia O'Keeffe, D. H. Lawrence, Max Ernst (who lived for a time in Sedona, Ariz.) and illiterate Army general Kit Carson, who forced the Navaho into a concentration camp. Although Keneally felt "immensity phobia" at the Southwest's vast heights and spaces, his remarkable book celebrates pre-Columbian gods and spirits who still communicate with the faithful in a territory open to the infinite. Keneally playfully draws some unusual historical parallels in order to chide Americans (condescendingly at times) for their inattention to their ancient roots on this continent. For those who don't know the region, an engaging if partial introduction. For those who do, there's the fun of watching a good novelist pursue his obsessions.