The best books set in southern New Mexico include Denise Chávez's Las Cruces novel Face of an Angel, Pat Mora's borderland memoir House of Houses, Eugene Manlove Rhodes's Tularosa classic Pasó por Aquí, and Edward Abbey's Fire on the Mountain. The southern half of the state — the Mesilla Valley around Las Cruces, the Tularosa Basin, White Sands, and the El Paso borderland — has a literature distinct from the Santa Fe and Taos north: more borderland, more ranch country, more desert. This is a reader's guide to it. For the statewide picture, see Best Books Set in New Mexico.
Published June 2026 · Curated by Josh Eldred, New Mexico Literacy Project
Face of an Angel — Denise Chávez
The essential Las Cruces novel, by the city's signature writer and founder of the Border Book Festival. An American Book Award winner following Soveida Dosamantes, a career waitress, across decades of work, family, and love in southern New Mexico. Follow it with her Loving Pedro Infante.
House of Houses — Pat Mora
A lyrical family memoir structured as a year in a magical family home, by the celebrated poet of the El Paso–Las Cruces borderland. Mora is one of the great voices of the Chihuahuan Desert and of Mexican-American family life; her poetry collections (Chants, Borders) are equally worth seeking out.
Pasó por Aquí — Eugene Manlove Rhodes
The classic cowboy novella of southern New Mexico, set in the Tularosa country Rhodes knew firsthand. A spare, humane story of an outlaw redeemed, by the writer sometimes credited with helping popularize "Land of Enchantment." The finest short fiction of the southern ranch country.
Fire on the Mountain — Edward Abbey
Abbey's spare novel of a stubborn rancher who refuses to sell his land to the government as the missile range and White Sands expand around him — set in the southern New Mexico desert Abbey loved. A precursor to his later environmental rebellion, and one of the great novels of the region.
More of the southern half
Southern New Mexico's story runs from the Apache homelands to the cattle frontier to the atomic age. For the deeper history, read about Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War in the southeast, the Apache and Geronimo across the south, and the atomic age that detonated its first bomb at the Trinity site in the southern desert. The borderland's bilingual children's books, many from El Paso's Cinco Puntos Press, appear in Best Books for New Mexico Kids.
Frequently asked questions
What books are set in Las Cruces?
Denise Chávez's Face of an Angel and Loving Pedro Infante are the essential Las Cruces novels.
What is the classic novel of southern New Mexico?
Eugene Manlove Rhodes's Pasó por Aquí (1927), set in the Tularosa Basin.
What should I read about the borderland?
Pat Mora's memoir House of Houses and her poetry, and Denise Chávez's Las Cruces fiction.
Cite This Guide
Eldred, J. (June 2026). Best Books Set in Southern New Mexico. New Mexico Literacy Project.
https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/best-books-set-in-southern-new-mexico
Original curation by Josh Eldred. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.