Spanning forty years, the second book in John Nichols's New Mexico trilogy, The Magic Journey, tells the tale of how relentless progress transformed a rural backwater into a boomtown.
Boom times came to the forgotten little southwestern town of Chamisaville just as the rest of America was in the Great Depression. They came when a rattletrap bus loaded with stolen dynamite blew sky high, leaving behind a giant gushing hot spring. Within minutes, the town's...