Melanie Sumner discusses and signs her new novel The Ghost of Milagro Creek (Algonquin, $13.95), a convincing, despairing portrait of Taos, NM that is reminiscent of Rudolfo Anaya'sBless Me, Ultima.

The story of Ignacia Vigil Romero, a full Jacarilla Apache, and the two boys she raised to adulthood, Mister and Tomas, unfolds in a barrio of Taos, NM - a mixed community of Native Americans, Hispanics, and whites.  Now deceased, Ignacia, a curandera - a medicine woman - begins this tale of starcrossed lovers.  Sumner's cast and a strong sense of Native American and Latino spirituality create a fascinating portrait of a community, wrapping issues of alcoholism, friendship, parental neglect, and conflicted identity around a miltidimensional tragedy, and Sumner captures the pain - and the humor - of a particular hardscrabble life and the voices of people who do not ordinarily frequent the pages of American fiction.

Sumner received an NEA grant this year and her short stories have appeared in the New Yorker and Harper's.  Her previous books include The School of Beauty and Charm, a novel, andPolite Society, stories.  In 1995 she received a Whiting award for fiction, and she teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.  On writing The Ghost of Milagro Creek, she says:

"In the beginning, I wrote a very male book: the spare writing style mirrored the uncluttered landscape of New Mexico, and the terse dialogues, even those involving females, only suggested the interior worlds of the characters.  In later drafts, Abuela took over.  Her honesty forces the other characters to face themselves and confront each other.  By the end of the book, she has empowered the young Rocky to take charge of her own life, bringing the feminine energy to the forefront... I believe that this metamorphosis mirrors my own transition from wife to widow."