This interpretive guide combines history and ethnography to represent living traditions at the adobe and stone churches of New Mexico. Each chapter treats a particular church or group of churches and includes photographs, practical information for visitors, and context pertinent to current understanding. Frank Graziano provides unprecedented coverage of the churches by combining his extensive fieldwork with research in archives and previous scholarship. The book is written in an engaging narrative prose that brings the reader inside of congregations in Indian and Hispanic villages. The focus is less on church buildings than on people in relation to churches -- parishioners, caretakers, priests, restorers -- and on the author's experiences researching among them.

Frank Graziano is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays programs, Duke University, and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, among many others. He lives in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico.

Preface Chapter 1: Santuario de Chimayó Chapter 2: Churches along the High Road to Taos Chapter 3: St. Joseph Mission Church, Laguna Pueblo Chapter 4: San Esteban del Rey, Acoma Pueblo Chapter 5: Conflicts at Kewa and Isleta Pueblos Chapter 6: Churches along the Southern Rio Grande Chapter 7: St. Joseph Apache Mission, Mescalero Chapter 8: Mission Churches of Mora County Chapter 9: San Francisco de Asís, Golden Appendix: An Annotated Selection of Other Historic Churches Works Cited