New collection of short stories
Unanswered Howls, Stories of the Caja Del Rio
By Oriana Rodman
On the outskirts of Santa Fe, in the remarkable landscape of the Caja del Rio, a variety of characters and a lone wolf answer the call of the wild, each according to their nature.
“Thinking of Santa Fe as a place shrouded in myth, a last best place, or even as heaven on earth ignores the rough edges that delineate this area’s true allure. Unanswered Howls explores that verge at the outskirts of town, a grainy half-place where wilderness and tamed encroach and feed upon each other. Readers intent on understanding this valuable context and backstory, and those who simply crave tales of the wild and untamed will experience the Caja Del Rio through Rodman’s backdoor, pulled out into the raw wonder of mountain, rock, and moon, drawn by the wolf cry that echoes from our ancestral Way Back, calling us out into the open where some go to explore, some to escape, some to die—but where everyone finds the heaven that has been here all along.”
Jaima Chevalier is an author and film maker, and she calls the Caja home.
"Oriana Rodman's Unanswered Howls is brilliant, spare, unsentimental, and sometimes harsh. Read it if you want a true portrait of New Mexico."
Stephen Bodio is a Naturalist and author of 11 books including A Rage for Falcons, The Hounds of Heaven and Querencia.
“Visual artist Oriana Rodman has written a book of linked stories, a lone female wolf at the center and at the edge of each story. As we read deeper into Caja del Rio, into Northern New Mexico's elders, children, people of the land, the wolf grows older, and we as readers grow in our empathy and identification with this wolf, the landscape it abides in, and the people who interlink with the Unanswered Howls. From this debut book, we hope there will be more!”
