Tom Lea's "The Wonderful Country" opens as mejicano pistolero Martin Bredi is returning to El Puerto El Paso] after a fourteen-year absence. Bredi carries a gun for the Chihuahuan warlord Cipriano Castro and is on Castro's business in Texas. Fourteen years earlier--shortly after the end of the Civil War--when he was the boy Martin Brady, he killed the man who murdered his father and fled to Mexico where he became Martin Bredi.
Back in Texas Brady breaks a leg; then he falls in love with a married woman while recuperating; and, finally, to right another wrong, he kills a man. When...

Martin Bredi, a man who killed his father's murderer and fled to Mexico, returns to El Paso after a 14-year absence. There he breaks a leg, falls in love with a married woman and, finally, to right another wrong, he kills a man. Bredi becomes a man without a country.

Tom Lea was a realist who painted things as they are, but just happened to see more of what they are than most of us do. A muralist, painter, book illustrator, World War II artist-correspondent, historian, novelist, and humanist, Lea died in 2001 after creating in some sixty years a corpus of work that has captivated those who know it. This volume makes available the full range of his vigorous work. Old admirers of Lea's talents will delight in this presentation, and a whole new generation will be awed by the unique contribution he has made.

A Southwesterner from multicultural El Paso,...

Few artists saw World War II from as many perspectives as El Paso artist and writer Tom Lea. Commissioned by Life magazine to paint the war as it was being experienced by U.S. and Allied troops, Lea went aboard a Navy destroyer in the North Atlantic to cover the fight against the German U-boats in late 1941; was on the carrier Hornet days before its sinking during the desperate air and sea battles off Guadalcanal in 1942; recorded the struggles of Army Air Forces transport, fighter, and bomber crews in England, North Africa, and China in 1943; and hit the bloody beaches at Peleliu with...

After unsuccessful attempts at many careers, H. O. "Cowboy" Kelly had little to show except a rich store of memories of an America fast disappearing then and gone today. He translated those memories into paintings of the pleasures and toil of a rural society. The details of Kelly's life are in sharp contrast with his nostalgic paintings, but an irrepressible optimism and humor highlight both the paintings and William Johnson's chronicle of Kelly's life. The result is a charming presentation of nineteenth-century romantic who by accident of fate made himself a niche as artist in...