Rio Grande Books First Editions — The Definitive Collector's Identification Guide

Rio Grande Books is an Albuquerque publisher I know from the inside out. Their titles appear in every estate library and donation lot I process in the North Valley, the South Valley, Corrales, and the East Mountains. The books are modestly produced trade paperbacks and occasional hardcovers, with covers featuring santos carvings, retablo images, or photographs of New Mexico landscapes and historical figures. The spine reads "Rio Grande Books" or "LPD Press," and the copyright page carries a Los Ranchos de Albuquerque address. The subject matter is Hispano devotional art, santos traditions, New Mexico history, regional biography, and the cultural life of the Hispanic Southwest. These are the books you find in the homes of people who lived in New Mexico their entire lives and cared deeply about preserving the cultural traditions of their communities.

I handle Rio Grande Books titles constantly through NMLP intake. They show up alongside titles from Sunstone Press, the University of New Mexico Press, the Museum of New Mexico Press, and other Southwest regional publishers in collections built by people who knew their neighbors, attended Spanish Market, and understood what a santero's work meant to a community. Rio Grande Books is not a press that pursued the national trade market. It is a press that served New Mexico, and its catalog reflects the specificity and depth that come from that commitment. If you have Rio Grande Books titles to sell or donate, I handle any quantity through my free pickup service.

Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred

The Press and Its Origins

Rio Grande Books first editions, including Charlie Carrillo: Tradition and Soul, are sought-after collectibles commanding premium prices among Southwest and Western Americana collectors. Rio Grande Books and its companion imprint LPD Press were founded by Barbe Awalt (1951–2019) and Paul Rhetts, a married couple based in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, a small community in Albuquerque's North Valley. Their first publication, in 1994, was Charlie Carrillo: Tradition and Soul, a book about the prominent contemporary santero that Awalt and Rhetts wrote and designed themselves. That first book established the emphasis that would define the press for the next three decades: the living santos tradition of New Mexico, the faith and art of Hispano communities, and the cultural continuity that connects contemporary santeros to the colonial-era religious folk art tradition.

Awalt and Rhetts were not conventional publishers. They were community builders. In 1994 they also co-founded the New Mexico Book Co-op, a cooperative distribution and marketing organization that helped small New Mexico publishers reach readers through regional bookstores, museum shops, and direct sales. The Book Co-op addressed the fundamental challenge facing every small Southwest publisher: distribution. National distributors had little interest in regional titles with modest print runs, and the major bookstore chains were difficult to access. The Co-op created an alternative channel that kept New Mexico books in New Mexico bookstores.

The press grew steadily through the late 1990s and 2000s, with LPD Press serving as the primary imprint for santos and Hispano faith-and-art titles, and Rio Grande Books emerging as a broader imprint covering Southwest history, biography, memoir, and cultural studies extending beyond New Mexico into Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and other states with Hispanic Southwest heritage. By the time of Barbe Awalt's death in 2019, the combined catalog had grown to more than 350 titles, making the operation the largest independent book publisher in New Mexico.

In 2007, Awalt and Rhetts created the New Mexico Book Awards, an annual program recognizing the best books published in or about New Mexico. They expanded the program in 2012 to become the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards, broadening the geographic scope to encompass the entire Southwest region. The awards program was both a service to the New Mexico publishing community and a reflection of Awalt and Rhetts's belief that regional publishing deserved the same institutional recognition given to national-market books.

Barbe Awalt died in May 2019. Paul Rhetts continues to operate the press from Los Ranchos de Albuquerque. The catalog remains available through the press's website, regional bookstores, and direct mail. The continuation of the press under Rhetts means that Rio Grande Books and LPD Press titles are not yet a closed system for collectors — unlike defunct publishers such as Ancient City Press or Clear Light Publishers, where every title is permanently out of print. However, Awalt's death did close her signature pool, and titles she personally authored or signed carry different collecting dynamics than the press's ongoing catalog.

The Catalog and Its Subject Areas

The Rio Grande Books and LPD Press catalog is organized around several interconnected subject areas, all rooted in the cultural life of the Hispanic Southwest.

Santos and Hispano Devotional Art

This is the founding emphasis of the press and remains its most distinctive contribution. The santos titles document the living tradition of religious wood carving and painting in New Mexico — the work of contemporary santeros who maintain techniques and iconographic conventions reaching back to the colonial period. Charlie Carrillo: Tradition and Soul (1994) was the first title, and the press built outward from Carrillo to document other santeros, the broader santos market (particularly at Santa Fe's annual Spanish Market), and the theological and cultural context in which santos are created and venerated. The My Saints Among Us series documented 400 years of New Mexican devotional art. These titles connect directly to the Hispano literature collecting tradition and the broader devotional art book collecting landscape.

New Mexico Regional History and Biography

The press published extensively on New Mexico history, with particular strength in regional biography, community history, and first-person narratives. The Voices of New Mexico series collected oral histories and first-person accounts from communities across the state, preserving narratives that might otherwise have been lost as older generations passed. The New Mexico Historical Encyclopedia provided a comprehensive reference for the state's history. Individual biographies documented military figures, political leaders, cultural figures, and community members whose stories were too regional for national publishers but essential for understanding New Mexico's history.

Hispano Cultural Traditions

Beyond the santos titles, the press documented the broader cultural life of Hispanic New Mexico: fiestas, food traditions, folk music, community celebrations, and the everyday cultural practices that define Hispano communities across the state. These titles tend toward the accessible and community-oriented rather than the strictly scholarly. They were written for the communities they documented, not for an outside academic audience, and that orientation gives them an authenticity and specificity that more formal ethnographic studies sometimes lack.

Children's Books

The press produced children's titles with Southwest cultural themes, including stories about tamale-making traditions, Hispano family life, and the cultural heritage of New Mexico's communities. These titles served the press's broader mission of cultural preservation by reaching younger audiences with narratives grounded in the traditions their families maintained.

Expanded Southwest Focus

Under the Rio Grande Books imprint, the catalog expanded to cover the arts, history, and culture of the Hispanic Southwest beyond New Mexico's borders. Titles on Texas Hispanic communities, Arizona cultural traditions, Colorado's Hispanic heritage, and the broader Spanish-colonial cultural footprint extended the press's geographic reach while maintaining its cultural focus. This expansion reflected the reality that Hispano cultural traditions do not respect state boundaries — the same santos carving traditions, faith practices, and community structures exist across the region.

First Edition Identification

Identifying Rio Grande Books and LPD Press first editions is generally straightforward, in part because most titles have modest print runs that did not require multiple printings. The practical reality is that the majority of Rio Grande Books and LPD Press copies in circulation are first editions. However, the identification conventions are worth knowing for the titles that did achieve multiple printings or revised editions. The authentication methodology provides the broader verification framework.

The Most Collected Rio Grande Books Titles

The collecting market for Rio Grande Books and LPD Press titles is shaped by several factors: the press's deep specialization in santos and Hispano devotional art, the community-oriented distribution model that kept many titles within New Mexico, the modest print runs that make certain titles scarce outside the state, and the 2019 death of co-founder Barbe Awalt, which closed her signature pool. The tiers below reflect relative collector interest.

Top Tier: The Essential Titles

• Signed copies by Barbe Awalt (d. 2019). Awalt authored or co-authored numerous titles in the catalog, and copies she signed at book events, Spanish Market, and other New Mexico cultural gatherings now represent a closed signature pool. These carry the strongest collector interest among the press's titles.
• Charlie Carrillo: Tradition and Soul (1994). The press's first publication, co-authored by Awalt and Rhetts. Documents the work of one of New Mexico's most prominent contemporary santeros. First editions of the founding title of a significant regional press always carry collector interest.
• My Saints Among Us series. The comprehensive documentation of 400 years of New Mexican devotional art. The hardcover editions, when they exist, are significantly scarcer than the paperbacks.
• Santos and santero documentation titles with photographic plates. Titles that document specific contemporary santeros with detailed color photography of their work are the press's most distinctive contribution. The photography records individual pieces that may now be in private collections and unavailable for re-documentation.

Strong Collector Interest

• Voices of New Mexico and More Voices of New Mexico. First-person oral histories and narratives from communities across the state. These titles preserve voices and stories that might otherwise have been lost, and their value increases as the narrators pass from the scene.
• New Mexico Historical Encyclopedia. A comprehensive state-history reference. The scope of the project and its usefulness as a research tool sustain demand.
• New Mexico Book Award winners published by the press. Titles that won the awards the press itself created carry a dual significance — both as individual titles and as artifacts of the institutional infrastructure Awalt and Rhetts built.
• Hispano cultural tradition titles with limited distribution. Titles that were distributed primarily through Spanish Market, the New Mexico Book Co-op, and direct mail may never have entered the broader used-book market, making them scarce outside their original community of readers.

Broader Catalog

The third tier encompasses the general-interest regional titles, the children's books, and the expanded Southwest coverage under the Rio Grande Books imprint. These have reading, reference, and cultural-preservation value but limited individual collector scarcity. The exception, as with all regional publishers, is association copies with provenance linking them to the communities the press documented — a copy of a santos title owned and inscribed by the santero it documents, for example, elevates any Rio Grande Books title from the third tier to the first regardless of the title's general market position.

Condition and Grading Considerations

Rio Grande Books and LPD Press titles present condition profiles specific to their format, distribution, and the communities that used them.

Santos reference titles were working tools for collectors, dealers, and scholars of New Mexican devotional art. Copies used for identification and appraisal purposes at Spanish Market, in gallery settings, or during estate evaluations may show handling wear, page-corner turning, and spine stress from being opened flat to photograph or compare individual pieces. These condition issues are common and expected for titles that functioned as field references.

Trade paperback format is the primary condition challenge. Like all regional publishers operating on modest budgets, Rio Grande Books produced most titles as softcover trade paperbacks. Card-stock covers are susceptible to creasing, corner bumping, and spine wear over time. Clean, uncreased copies with flat covers are the preferred state for collecting, but the majority of copies in circulation will show some evidence of normal use.

Southwest sun exposure affects Rio Grande Books titles as it does all books that spend years on shelves in New Mexico. Color-photograph covers are particularly susceptible to fading, with images losing vibrancy and text contrast diminishing. A copy with a cover that retains its original color saturation is less common than one with some degree of sun fading, particularly along the spine.

Regional distribution wear is a factor specific to small publishers. Titles that were carried to book fairs, Spanish Market booths, museum-shop consignment racks, and community events accumulated a different kind of wear than books that shipped directly from a warehouse to a bookstore shelf. Scuffing on covers, minor dings from transport, and the general patina of books that traveled the New Mexico book-fair circuit are common and should be evaluated in the context of the press's distribution model rather than against the pristine standards of a major trade publisher.

The Collecting Market for Rio Grande Books

The market for Rio Grande Books and LPD Press titles operates within a specific geographic and cultural context. The primary audience is collectors, scholars, and community members interested in the santos tradition, Hispano cultural life, and New Mexico regional history. This audience is concentrated in New Mexico, with secondary concentrations in the broader Southwest states and among the national community of santos collectors and Spanish colonial art enthusiasts.

Because the press distributed primarily through regional channels — the New Mexico Book Co-op, direct mail, museum shops, Spanish Market, and regional bookstores — many titles never entered the national used-book market in significant numbers. This geographic concentration creates a scarcity dynamic for out-of-state collectors: titles that are relatively common in Albuquerque estate libraries may be effectively unavailable to a collector in the Midwest or the East Coast who relies on online platforms.

The press's ongoing active status means that many titles remain available directly from the publisher or through regional retailers. This distinguishes Rio Grande Books from defunct publishers where all titles are permanently out of print. For collectors, the focus is on early LPD Press titles from the 1990s (which may be out of print even if the press itself is active), signed copies by Barbe Awalt (closed pool since 2019), hardcover editions of titles that also appeared in paperback, and limited-distribution titles that were sold primarily at events and through direct mail.

The relationship between Rio Grande Books and the broader Hispano literature collecting market is the key context for understanding the press's significance. The santos titles document a living tradition that connects contemporary Albuquerque and northern New Mexico communities to the colonial-era religious art that scholars like E. Boyd, Marta Weigle, and Thomas J. Steele documented through other publishers. Rio Grande Books provided the contemporary-practice perspective that complemented the historical scholarship published by Ancient City Press, the University of New Mexico Press, and the Museum of New Mexico Press.