Backlands (44 page)

Writing historical fiction requires paying a great deal of attention to an accurate recounting of the myriad aspects of the world the characters inhabit in a story. For information about the Civilian Conservation Corps, a groundbreaking federal program that put hundreds of thousands of boys and young men to work during the Great Depression, I turned to Richard Melzer's
Coming of Age in the Great Depression: The Civilian Conservation Corps Experience in New
Mexico, 1933–1942
; John C. Paige's
The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park Service 1933–1942
:
An Administrative History
;
Alison T. Otis et al.,
The Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps: 1933–42;
and Major John A. Porter, Q.M.C., “The Enchanted Forest: Army Quartermaster Support to the Civilian Conservation Corps During the Great Depression,”
The Quartermaster Review
(March–April 1934).

Over lunch, my friend Bryan J. “Chip” Chippeaux provided me with valuable information about his great-great-grandfather John W. “Jake” Owen, a former Lincoln County sheriff at the turn of the twentieth century, and gave me permission to use Jake as a private detective in
Backlands
investigating the mysterious disappearance of a man from the Double K Ranch on the Tularosa. Bill Martin and Molly Radford Martin's book,
Bill Martin, American,
was a surprisingly helpful resource in my understanding of New Mexico law enforcement practices in the early years of the twentieth century, as was Chuck Hornung's
New Mexico's Rangers: The Mounted Police.

A charming self-published memoir by Gretchen Heitzler,
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch,
provided me with a wealth of information about the Tularosa Basin, the surrounding area, and ranch life during World War II.

Information about the World War II Army Specialized Training Program came from a 1948 publication by Robert R. Palmer et al.,
The Army Ground Forces: The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops,
and Louis E. Keefer's book,
Scholars in Foxholes: The Story of the Army Specialized Training Program in World War II.
My understanding of Operation Husky, the World War II Allied invasion of Sicily, was greatly enhanced by
Brave Men,
written by the famous American war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was killed in action in the South Pacific near the end of the war.

Bill Mauldin, a New Mexico native son, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist, and creator of the famous World War II cartoons featuring Willie and Joe, two combat foot soldiers, wound up in
Backlands
because of a dinner I had with Bill's son Andy. For me, it was a lot of fun to put Mauldin on the page and learn about his life. Revered by his comrades in arms, he died in early 2003, and millions of veterans mourned.

Todd DePastino's biography,
Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front,
gave me a handle on the Forty-Fifth Infantry's landing on Sicily and Mauldin's experiences there. Two of Mauldin's memoirs,
The Brass Ring: A Sort of Memoir
and
A Sort of a Saga,
helped me understand his boyhood years on the Tularosa and his later life.

Finally, over the course of fifteen years and ten books, Brian Tart, the publisher and president of Dutton, has done much to make me a better writer. For that I say with heartfelt gratitude and deep appreciation,
muchas gracias,
jefe.

MICHAEL M
C
GARRITY
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Hard Country,
the Anthony Award–nominated
Tularosa,
and eleven other bestselling Kevin Kerney crime novels. A former deputy sheriff for Santa Fe County, he also served as an instructor at the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy and as an investigator for the New Mexico public defender's office. He lives in Santa Fe with his wife, Emily Beth.

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