Encantado: Desert Monologues

Inspired by Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Pat Mora brings us the poetic monologues of Encantado, an imagined southwestern town.

Each poem forms a story that reveals the complex and emotional journeys we take through life. Mora meanders through the thoughts of Encantado’s residents--the mothers and sisters, brothers and fathers in whom we see slivers of ourselves and our loved ones--and paints a portrait of a community through its inhabitants’ own diverse voices. Even the river has a voice we understand.

Inspired by both the real and imagined stories around her, Mora transports us to the heart of what it means to join in a chorus of voices. A community. A town. Encantado.

Pat Mora is an author, speaker, educator, and literacy advocate. She has written more than forty-five books for adults, teens, and children. Her poetry collections include Chants, Borders, Communion, Agua Santa: Holy Water, Aunt Carmen’s Book of Practical Saints, and Adobe Odes; her books of nonfiction include Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle and the family memoir House of Houses. The recipient of two honorary doctorates and a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.